


No Longer Blue

by LetItRaines



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-08-14 05:04:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16486445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LetItRaines/pseuds/LetItRaines
Summary: Killian Jones met Emma Swan on one of the worst days of his life. That day continuously plays over in his mind, and as much as he wants it to stop, he never wants to forget.





	1. Chapter One

There aren’t a lot of places near large cities like this, a two lane road with oak trees encasing the pavement, towering above the worn down gravel so that you cannot see anything but thick wood and the faded yellow lines that separate the lanes, but you can see the stars reflected against the inky blackness of the sky, scattered across the skyline in a way that you simply don’t see in urban areas. The only other source of light comes from the dim headlights of Killian’s truck and every few minutes from a passing car whose driver forgets to turn of their bright lights when passing him. Usually it wouldn’t bother him, but his eyes are weary. It’s far past midnight, his coffee cold in its holder, and the radio is only playing songs that are more likely to lull him into slumber than keep him awake.

 

He’s gone off the beaten path on sections of his trip to New York, taking back roads instead of the interstate because of construction that has traffic backed up even in the late night hours. He also likes it better this way, more in tune with nature and less like being another vine swinging through the concrete jungle.

 

“Killian?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Are we almost there?”

 

“Not yet, love. You should go back to sleep.”

 

“No, no. I can stay up with you.”

 

“You’ve been asleep this entire time, Swan. Don’t start trying to stay awake now on my account.”

 

“Just keep talking to me, and I’ll stay awake. Pinky promise.”

 

He sticks his pinky out to twist it with hers, her skin smooth against the rough pads of his finger. He doesn’t let go, pulling her hand up to kiss her knuckles before resting their hands on his thigh, pinkies still intertwined.

 

“So once upon a time…” he begins.

 

“ _Killian_.”

 

“Shhh, shhh, shush. It’s story time.”

 

Killian Jones is a retired Lieutenant Commander of the United States Navy despite his original allegiance to Great Britain, having recently been promoted when he made the decision to leave to pursue other interests. At least, that’s what it said on his resignation form. He left in the highest regards of his fellow men and women, with a pension and a heavily scarred left hand after the death of his brother in an accident that he prefers not to talk about or think about even though the phone call replays in his mind on repeat. Since he prefers not to talk about it, he doesn’t. Not to anyone. He just lives with the fact that his only family, one of the only people he’s ever really loved, is gone only to be remembered through stories.

 

Stories don’t do a damn thing for him.

 

But Liam died eight years ago when Killian was a young twenty-six, his entire life full of hopes and dreams ahead of him until suddenly it wasn’t.

 

In the time that’s passed, Killian’s been in places full of both darkness and light. He’s stared down the bottom of many a bottle of rum, and he’s watched the sun rise over the water he so rarely touches anymore, the water that used to be his home far more than the land ever was. He’s fallen in love only to realize that it never really was love, but it still hurt like hell to find her in bed with another man who happened to be her husband. It’s not so fun being someone’s plaything when you wanted them to be your everything.

 

He’s lived off his benefits and sheltered himself in his apartment with hundreds of books and no plan on leaving until he decided that enough was enough and finally did something with his life. He somehow stumbled his way into being an intelligence analyst, shifting through reports and studies and making the distinction of which information is useful and which isn’t. It’s similar to what he was doing in the Navy, but he ignores that because he sits in an office with people who legitimately talk around a water cooler instead of running at four in the morning and being deployed for months at a time. It’s similar enough that he’s qualified for the job, but it doesn’t bring the memories of losing his brother to the forefront of mind and that’s all he really wants.

 

He wants to remember how Liam lived, but he doesn’t want to remember how he died.

 

As the years have passed, the pain has never dulled, but he’s learned to live with it most of the time, the bottom of the rum bottle only being found after several drinking sessions instead of just the one. He misses Liam every damn day, and sometimes he’ll wake in the middle of the night and see a flash of blue so clearly that he has to close his eyes to will it to go away.

 

Don’t get him started on what it’s like to look at a mirror and see the blue reflected in his own eyes or look down at the scars on his left hand.

 

So now Killian doesn’t spend his days out on the sea (though he had almost been promoted out of that when he left anyways, spending more time inside than anything else) with people who understand him and the way that those who were born and bred military live their lives. It’s a lifestyle many recognize but few understand.

 

His apartment is immaculate, not a shirt out of place or a Tupperware container unmatched to its lid. Every shoe is with its match, and every blanket is folded and placed in its correct spot before he goes to bed each night. Everything but his hair, really. No matter how hard he tries to contain it, it’s never quite right.

 

Everything else, though, is in its proper place.

 

Well, except for Emma Swan.

 

Emma Swan is never in the right place. He’s not even sure she has a right place. She’s like a tornado that never ends, and he lives in the eye of the storm, always watching her whirl by, blonde curls surrounding him in a messy wave as her green eyes calm him in the crescendo.

 

She is Liam’s girlfriend’s (he’ll never be able to call Ruby something else) best friend, and somehow she’s become his. She’s become his friend, his lifeline, his love.

 

She doesn’t know about that last one.

 

They met at Liam’s funeral, what has to be one of the worst days of his life. She sat next to Ruby, her hand threaded through her friend’s the entire time while Ruby’s free hand was intertwined with his, holding on like her life depended on it. Maybe it did.

 

He was in a daze that day, but he wasn’t drunk. He purposely made sure, for Liam, not to have a sip of alcohol, but that didn’t make him any more coherent through the entire thing. They didn’t have parents, he and Liam. Well, they had a mom who died when Killian was fifteen and a father who doesn’t deserve the name dad. Who knows what happened to him? Who cares? Killian doesn’t. So they didn’t have parents for people to pass their condolences onto, and Killian became a member of a receiving line for a party of two, he and Ruby acting like it was okay and that each _I’m sorry_ actually helped them grieve.

 

Killian didn’t have the alcohol to dull the pain, so he needed something to focus on. His focus landed on the blonde woman making sure that everything at the funeral and the reception ran smoothly. He didn’t even know her name, really. He only knew that she was showing more kindness than any other person in the room, and he was glad that Ruby had someone other than him to lean on.

 

He wasn’t good support.

 

Never really had been.

 

Probably never would be.

 

It wasn’t until later that he truly met her, having picked up from conversation that her name was Emma Swan. She was glorious, he might have been half in love already, and he’d never even said hello.

 

“Hi,” she began as she stood above him from where he was sitting on the couch of the apartment that he and Liam shared, “do you need anything? Food, something to drink, a blanket?”

 

He stared up at her to see that she was fidgeting with the ends of her hair, still curled in the same way as it had been earlier that day. He may not know much about women’s hairstyles, but he does know that is impressive.

 

_Her eyes are green._

Something about the way she was looking at him made his heart constrict and his throat tighten, little sparks running down his spine.

 

“It’s Emma, right?” he asked instead of answering her question.

 

“Yeah, yeah. Emma Swan.”

 

“Killian Jones.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Swan, would you care to sit?”

 

He can tell she’s weighing her options, the way her feet never stay planted on the ground and the way she tugs her bottom lip with her teeth, both obvious signs of nervousness.

 

“Sure,” she finally said, sitting down in the armchair next to him.

 

They’re silent for quite awhile as he gets lost in his thoughts, and he knows that he’s making her uncomfortable when his eyes get glassy and he slaps his leg out of frustration over how his life has ended up this way.

 

It’s not fair, and all he can think about is Liam saying that awful phrase of “the fair only comes to town once a year.” Why couldn’t that have been the day he lost his brother? Why did this have to happen?

 

“Do you want to talk?”

 

“What, lass?”

 

“Do you want to talk?”

 

“I don’t think,” he grumbles, trying to keep his voice from breaking, “I have it in me to talk about him right now.”

 

“It doesn’t have to be about him.” She shrugs her shoulders and then moves to adjust her black skirt, pulling the material further over her knees, erasing the creaminess of her legs that was just exposed to him. “It can be about anything. Or we can sit in silence. I can also leave and get the hell out of your hair. Whatever helps you.”

 

He studies her for a moment, and he can’t help but notice how beautiful she is up close. She has these wide green eyes he admired a moment ago with thick, dark lashes surrounding them that land against her freckle-covered cheeks when she blinks, and he finds himself staring at her for a moment too long before he has to look away. He wants to know more about her, about the curve of her nose and the freckles that are plastered over her shoulders too, but now may be the most inappropriate time in the world to be thinking about a woman.

 

It’s the only thing he can think about because everything else is just too damn depressing. He shouldn’t do it. He shouldn’t allow himself to become distracted by her, but he does.

 

“Where are you from, love?”

 

“Currently, here. Boston.”

 

He doesn’t fail to notice that she leaves out where she was from before. She’s a kind soul, but he can tell that she guards her heart. Good. She should because hearts are so easily broken. And you don’t even have to do anything wrong for it to happen. Sometimes it shatters all on its own.

 

“What do you do?”

 

“I’m a college student.”

 

He’s a bit taken aback by that. She looks to be his age, and maybe she is. Not everyone graduates college from an early age.

 

“Not to be forward, but how old are you?”

 

“Twenty one.”

 

Oh, so she is younger. He has to think about that for a moment, trying to piece together how she knows Ruby. Liam is…was thirty, and Ruby is twenty five, just a year shy of him, so how did the two of them meet? They obviously weren’t schoolmates.

 

“Ruby’s grandmother took me in when I was sixteen when my last foster home didn’t exactly work out. I know you were trying to figure out the whole age thing. I can see the confusion all over your face.”

 

“Aren’t you perceptive?”

 

She shrugs her shoulders. She does that a lot. Maybe he’s a bit perceptive, too.

 

He somehow finds himself talking to Emma Swan for the rest of the night. She fascinates him, even if he can tell that she’s walking on eggshells so not as to upset him. Nothing is going to make him feel better, not really, so all he really wants is for her to be herself. She’s lovely, really, and he finds himself smiling for the first time in a long time as she tells him stories about she and Ruby that let him see into the mind of Emma Swan a little more.

 

He’s not proud of what he did next, even if it was one of the best moments of his life. He slept with her, and even if most of his day is blurred out to help him cope, that is clear and in high definition.

 

He remembers the way her lips felt against his, the surprised gasp she let out when they first kissed, and the way she melted into it and pulled at his hair to pull him in closer. He remembers what it felt like when she was running her lips down his throat, worrying a bruise at his pulse point that he had for weeks after. He remembers when she slipped her bra from her shoulders and exposed her breasts to him, the way they felt in his hands and in his mouth, the way her nipples pebbled when he ghosted his thumbs over them. He remembers the hard lines of her body that were somehow also soft, and he remembers the moment he buried himself inside of her, the feel of her tight, wet heat embracing him as he captured her whimper with his lips. He remembers every movement, every thrust and every caress and every kiss. He remembers how it felt when she came around him and the way that she whispered his name into his shoulder.

 

He remembers that she smells like vanilla, maybe even cinnamon.

 

He remembers it all.

 

He also remembers that they don’t talk about it anymore.

 

She fell asleep with him in his bed that night, a comforting weight that he kept close to him, holding onto her stomach like his life depended on it. Maybe it did. Maybe like she was Ruby’s lifeline earlier, she’s his now. He wonders if she has someone to be hers.

 

When he woke the next morning, she was still there, but she was turned in his arms staring at him as she ran her hand over his cheek, her fingers ghosting over the scar on his cheek before landing on his scruff that he’s allowed himself to grow now that he doesn’t follow a dress code.

 

“Hey,” she whispered in the light of the early morning.

 

“Hello, beautiful,” he whispered back despite himself, despite not knowing how the hell to deal with this situation.

 

“Killian, we shouldn’t have done what we did.”

 

She kissed his jaw even as she said the words.

 

His eyes flutter closed at the feel of her lips against him again.

 

“I know.”

 

She’s still running her hands across his face, like she’s looking for something that proves he’s going to be okay, and he’s still got her wrapped in his arms. He doesn’t want to let go. This is the only comfort he’s felt in the past two weeks. He’s surprised she didn’t leave in the middle of the night.

 

“Can we…can we be friends?”

 

He knows she probably doesn’t mean it. He’ll probably never see her again, and this will just be a story of two ships passing closely in the night only to never cross paths again.

 

“Of course, Swan.”

 

Later, when she’d gotten dressed in some of Ruby’s extra clothes that were in Liam’s room, and he was trying to stomach some breakfast, she sat down across from him at the kitchen table, surprising him because he figured she’d walk right out the door.

 

“I have to go to work.”

 

“I thought you were a college student.”

 

“I am, but I also am a waitress.” She slides a piece of paper across the table. “This is my number. Call if you need anything, someone to talk to, some food. I don’t cook, but I can bring you food from Granny’s. I know we don’t really know each other, but I’d like to be there for you. And for Ruby, too.”

 

 _I know what it’s like to be alone._ She doesn’t say the words, but he hears them nonetheless.

 

“Thank you, love,” he looks down at the piece of paper before pocketing it. “I’ll call. I promise.”

 

“Pinky promise?”

 

He laughs because he thinks she can’t be serious, but then she’s reaching her hand across the table, pinky outstretched. He doesn’t hesitate to tangle his finger with hers.

 

“Pinky promise.”

 

He doesn’t call for awhile, too caught up in himself, but he does call eventually.

 

By eventually, he means months later when he’s decided to stop feeling sorry for himself and drowning in bottles of rum. Like so many things, he’s not entirely sure how Emma Swan came into his life, and he’s even more unsure of why she stayed.

 

She’s been there for everything in the past eight years of his life, the good and the bad, and even though he thought he wasn’t capable of love anymore, not after everything he’s been through, both with Liam’s death and the events after, he loves her with his entire being.

 

He loves her eyes and her hair and the way that there’s this piece that always falls in her face even when she tries to keep it away. He finds himself tucking it behind her ear more often than not, and he loves the soft smile she gives him whenever he does that. He loves her laugh, the way it dissolves into the air when she’s laughing so hard that she can’t breathe. He loves how brave she is, fighting past her demons so that she can help him fight against his.

 

He loves the fact that she has still never learned to cook, and that more often than not she’s sitting in his apartment with takeout and a beer when he gets home from work, a closed-lip smile on her face as the more often than not Chinese food fills her cheeks. He loves that she hates the mornings, but she’ll crawl out of bed every other morning and go running with him until the two of them fall into the grass at Boston Commons with heavy breaths and aching limbs. He loves that she’ll lay with him in the hammock on the balcony of his apartment, listening to him as he tells old sea tales of the constellations, grabbing her hand and pointing to the sky on nights where the stars show despite the lights of the city, only for her to kiss his bicep and rest her head on his shoulder as they lay in a companionable silence under the inky blanket of the sky.

 

She’s everything to him.

 

He doesn’t think he’d have made it through the past eight years without her, and he’d definitely not make it through this upcoming weekend without her. He and Emma are on their way to New York because Ruby is getting married, and while Ruby is like a sister to him and he’s happier than could be that she’s found love again, all he can think about is that it could be Liam standing up at the alter with her on Saturday.

 

Emma falls asleep again despite him telling her a story about a project at work. Actually, that’s most likely why she’s fallen asleep. By the time he finds their hotel and parks his truck in the garage, it’s two in the morning and Emma has been out for the past hour.

 

“Emma, darling,” he whispers, reaching over to shake her shoulder to wake her. She startles the slightest bit, but he has to shake her harder for her eyes to pop open. She’s just shy of twenty-nine, and she sleeps like a child. “Swan, wake up.”

 

“Has anyone ever told you, Killian Jones,” she murmurs under her breath as she starts to wake up, “that a proper friend would just cart me right off to our room and I’d be none the wiser?”

 

“I’m pretty sure I’d get arrested for carting a sleeping women through the streets of New York, but whatever you want, love.”

 

She laughs before the laugh gets caught up in her yawn.

 

“Or hit on by a bunch of old women that one time you did that to me at home.”

 

He doesn’t have to cart her through the streets, but she does drag along beside him almost as slowly as her rolling suitcase. She doesn’t even bother undressing or brushing her teeth before crawling into her bed and under the comforter. She’s going to regret that when she wakes in the morning, but he’s not going to wake her again. Instead he goes through his nighttime routine before crawling into his own bed and turning off the lights.

 

His alarm goes off the next morning, and he wants to commit unspeakable acts against whoever it is that created the alarm. He’s usually up with the sun, but with the drive last night, he decided to allow himself to sleep in. Just barely, though, not wanting to alter his sleep schedule too much.

 

“Killian, I swear to God turn that fucking thing off.”

 

A pillow hits his back before he’s able to crawl over the bedside table between their beds and turn off the alarm on his phone. When he looks up it’s to Emma propped up on her side look at him with hooded, but irritated eyes.

 

“It took you long enough.”

 

“Swan, I had to wake up enough to turn it off. And you slept a hell of a lot longer than me, so count your blessings that you’ll make it through today without a pounding headache from a lack of sleep.”

 

He bit those words out more harshly than he intended to, and he knows it from the way Emma recoils, a hurt look on her face that he hates himself for putting there. He sighs, a heavy breath of air passing through him before he sits against the headboard and runs his hand through his hair in frustration at how he just spoke to Emma. This day is…it’s awful, and he was really hoping it wouldn’t affect him like this. He doesn’t want to cry. He wants to be better than this, but he can feel the water stinging in his eyes.

 

He doesn’t even know when Emma got out of bed, but suddenly she’s crawling into his lap and wrapping her arms around his neck, embracing him as tightly as she can.

 

“It’s okay, Killian,” she whispers against his shoulder while he wraps his hands around her waist, pulling her closer to him. “We can go back home. We don’t have to be here this weekend. We can go back home.”

 

Without his permission his tears are falling into her hair, and he can’t help himself from burying his nose at her temple just for the feel of her skin on his, cinnamon and vanilla filling his senses.

 

He doesn’t know how long they stay that way, but eventually she pulls back from him and begins wiping the tears from his cheeks. One escapes her grasp and lands on his lips, the saltiness not something he ever wanted to taste again.

 

“Killian, do you want me to drive home? I can drive us back.”

 

“No,” he shakes his head. “No, we need to be here for Ruby. You _have_ to be here for Ruby, and I should be.”

 

“I can get a flight home if you want to go without me.”

 

“I can’t. I can’t leave,” he mumbles under his breath. “I have to be here for Liam. He’d want her to be happy. I want her to be happy.”

 

“He’d want _you_ to be happy.”

 

“I am happy.” She’s running her fingers over the chain around her neck, the chain that has Liam’s ring attached to it. He wants to reach out and touch it, too, but he gave that to her. It’s hers now, no longer belonging to him, and he’d never take it back. “It’s just hard because I keep thinking that it should be him getting married this weekend. Maybe not necessarily to Ruby, though I know they loved each other so deeply, but he should have been able to get married and have children and have a life. And that was all taken away from him by a damn mechanical error.”

 

She runs her hands over his face again, and he can see the tears pooling in her eyes as well. “It’s not fair, Killian. It’s never going to be fair. It’s just a hard weekend, though. I know you never stop thinking about him, but when this is over, it’ll be easier again.”

 

She pulls herself off his lap and into his side, letting him put his arm around her shoulder and kissing the top of her hair.

 

“How much time do we have until the lunch?”

 

“A few hours, love.”

 

“Do you want to find some coffee and some breakfast?”

 

“Aye,” he confirms, thinking that the coffee may help his headache, “but we probably need to get ready for the day first since we’re not coming back here.”

 

He lets Emma shower first since it’ll take her longer to get ready, and as inappropriate as it is in so many ways, he can’t help but thinking about her in the shower with the water dripping down her body. It and the combination of her sitting on his lap has him half hard in a way that he’s just not comfortable with. She’s his friend who was just helping him grieve his brother again, and here he is thinking about her naked.

 

He remembers every line and every curve of her body, the way that her back arched off the bed when he swiveled his hips against hers, how she sounded when she said _oh gods you’re amazing, harder please_ , and the way she looked when she came. He remembers every glorious moment, and as much as he tries to forget it all, he can’t.

 

He’s lost in his own thoughts when the shower clicks off and not two minutes later Emma’s walking back into the bedroom in a pair of shorts that could pass as underwear and a tank top that very clearly shows her lack of a bra, especially with the way her still wet skin has the material clinging to her. She’s obviously decided to kill him. This is going to be how he perishes.

 

“Shower’s all yours.”

 

“Did you leave any hot water?”

 

She winks. “Most definitely not.”

 

She most definitely did not leave him any hot water, so he’s left to take a cold, bracing shower that has any erotic thoughts of Emma dying as the ice hits his skin. It has all of his thoughts dying really, and he’s glad for it. He’s broken down in the shower one too many times for his liking, and he wants for today to be a good day despite everything.

 

He gets dressed in the bathroom. Emma helped him pick out a navy suit with a light blue dress shirt for today, no tie. He still remembers how she told him she liked him in blue because it brought out his eyes. He owns more blue than anything else now. Most of it is some form of plaid, but it still counts.

 

“You look handsome,” Emma compliments when he exits the bathroom, his cologne following him.

 

“You didn’t even turn around.”

 

“I can just tell.” He sighs as she runs her eyeliner across her top lid. He has no idea how she does that so perfectly every time. “Plus, I can see you in the mirror.”

 

She does turn then, and even with her hair in a towel on top of her head and only half of her makeup on, she’s going to be the most beautiful woman at the wedding this weekend.

 

“Thank you, love. I’m sure you’ll look beautiful once your face is painted.”

 

She scrunches her nose as she glares at him. “Killian Jones, you are a jackass.”

 

“A jackass with a good ass. Or so I’ve been told.”

 

Emma eventually finishes getting ready, her blonde curls falling down her back in a jade jumpsuit with a neckline so low that he can’t breathe. When she drapes the long gold chain over her neck, Liam’s ring laying flat in the concave between her breasts, he really does think this hotel will be his final resting place. He’s got to get himself together. This is ridiculous.

 

“You’re going to freeze, darling. It’s cold outside.”

 

“That’s why I have a jacket _and_ you, Jones.”

 

Yep. She does have him. Completely.

 

Emma’s more familiar with the streets of New York City than he is, showing him different landmarks and tourist traps as they walk around with their coffees in their hands. He feels entirely out of place for them to be dressed as they are at nine (dressed to the nines at nine) in the morning, but they just passed someone wearing no pants so it’s not too odd. Emma’s lost in a story about how she, Ruby, and Mary Margaret once joined in on a tour group they didn’t pay for and made up fake lives to all of the tourists in the group. It didn’t matter that the girls were tourists themselves and knew about as much of the city as those in the group. It wasn’t until Ruby moved from Boston to New York four years ago that Emma really got to know the city.

 

They have to get an Uber to go uptown for Graham’s parent’s brownstone because Killian doesn’t want to drive and there is just no feasible way for them to walk – and also Emma refused – and when they pull up to the front door, Killian lets out a low whistle at the white mansion covered in vines that’s somehow nestled into the middle of the city.

 

“I think we’re out of our league here, Swan.”

 

“Wait until you see the inside.”

 

Before they even have a chance to ring the doorbell, he’s being pulled into a hug, Ruby’s arms around their necks as she literally squeals in their ears.

 

“Oh my God, you guys are here, I am so excited you have no idea.”

 

“Rubes,” Emma whines, “You’re choking me.”

 

“Oh shit, I’m sorry.” She releases them then, and Ruby is absolutely radiating with joy. Good. “I am just so excited. Obviously I’m excited for everyone else to be here, but you two are my favorites.”

 

He can’t help but laugh, leaning in to press a kiss to Ruby’s cheek. “We’re glad to see you, too, darling.”

 

Ruby smiles softly at him, a very un-Ruby-like thing to do, before letting them into the house. When Emma takes her coat off, Ruby tells her she looks fucking hot, and that’s a much more Ruby-like thing to say. Emma was right, the inside is incredible. It’s like walking into a magazine, and he wonders how someone manages to get a life like this where your house is more than somewhere to lay your hat.

 

He meets Graham and his parents, and while they seem perfectly nice, he can tell they feel awkward around him. He doesn’t blame them. He’s the brother of the bride’s dead boyfriend. It’s not exactly a normal or happy situation. He finds that most of the people at this luncheon feel awkward around him, and he almost cries in relief when David, Mary Margaret, and Leo show up because at least those are familiar faces who don’t unintentionally make him feel unwelcome.

 

At one point, all of these people lived in Boston, but Ruby moved to New York City while David and Mary Margaret moved to Maine and started a family. Only he and Emma remain in the city, and it’s rare that he’s able to see his old friends. Emma sees them more often, but she’s also closer to everyone in the room.

 

It’s difficult to listen to everyone talk about love and happiness and the love between Ruby and Graham. When he looks at Ruby’s face, she’s elated. She’s as happy as he’s ever seen her, and it hurts. It doesn’t hurt because she moved on. She deserves everything in the world. It hurts because even almost a decade later, he wants his brother back.

 

Hell, that’ll never change no matter how much time passes.

 

He has to excuse himself to go sit in one of the sitting rooms and allow himself to breathe. He asked Emma not to follow him, and after a few minutes he thought she’d listened only to have Ruby’s grandmother sit in the chair opposite him and hand him a small glass of rum.

 

“She still loves him, you know.”

 

“What?”

 

“Ruby still loves Liam as much as she did a decade ago,” Granny tells him, her fierce façade fading into something kinder. “Maybe more if possible. She was inconsolable a few nights ago because just like you, she misses him. She’s just decided to miss him and be happy, unlike you.”

 

“I am happy. Why the hell do people keep saying that I’m not?”

 

“Maybe because you’re sitting in here by yourself when everyone else is having a good time in the other room?”

 

“I needed a moment, if that’s not too much to ask.”

 

He’s trying not to snap, to control his emotions, but he’s losing an uphill battle. Maybe he should have taken Emma’s suggestion and gone home. He can’t do that to Ruby, though. He just can’t.

 

“It’s not, but Killian Jones you deserve every good thing in this world, just like my darling Ruby and _our_ darling Emma.” A smirk is gracing the elderly woman’s face now, and he already knows what’s coming next. “Why in the world have the two of you not gotten married? I’m wanting some great grandchildren, and I don’t think Ruby’s going to be the one to give them to me even with her marriage.”

 

“Emma and I aren’t together.”

 

“Why the hell not?”

 

He shrugs. “It’s never been right for us. We’re friends, always have been.”

 

“Friends often make the best lovers.”

 

He is well aware of that. Uncomfortably so.

 

“Ms. Lucas,” he sighs, downing the rest of the rum, “I appreciate you in ways that I can never fully comprehend, but this weekend of all weekends is not the time for me or anyone to be thinking about my relationships. I just want to be here for Ruby.”

 

She studies him for a moment, tilting her head in contemplation, and he wants another glass of rum that he won’t allow himself to have. “You’re a good man, Killian. You should remember that.”

 

And at that, she’s gone, and he’s left to stew in his thoughts.

 

It’s not something he wants to do.


	2. Chapter Two

Emma met Killian on the day of his brother’s funeral. She also slept with him for the first time on the day of his brother’s funeral. So, you know, she makes fantastic decisions all of the time.

 

That second thing was _fantastic_. Just not a fantastic _decision_.

 

She doesn’t have the happiest life story, bounced around between foster homes and group homes after her parents left her outside of a firehouse with nothing more than a blanket and a card with her name on it. She was adopted once. Or almost adopted, really, but it didn’t go through. She was too young to remember any of that, but for some reason her social worker decided to tell her that information like she enjoyed rubbing the salt in the wound. How fucking hard would it have been to just leave that out?

 

Was it worse to know that you were once wanted, but then once the family gets to know you, they decide you’re not good enough for them? Or was it worse to think that you were never wanted at all and to live with that shadow following you and clouding you in darkness?

 

That’s why Killian losing his brother hit her so hard when she didn’t even know the guy. He had a family who he loved. He was loved, and he had it all taken away from him, ripped from his grasp in the blink of an eye as he was left to deal with the aftermath.

 

He was alone, and while it had been awhile since she was, she could understand some of his pain, even if it was in a different way.

 

Once she turned sixteen she had Granny and Ruby, the two of them taking her in when they noticed her wandering in the area for longer than any sixteen-year-old ever should. She was in a foster home at the time where the parents saw the kids as meal tickets, thriving off the money the state gave them and not caring for the kids, but what else was new? That’s why she didn’t go home until she had to, lingering around Granny’s dinner to do her homework and drink the occasional cup of coffee until one day Granny sat across from her and somehow caused Emma to spill all of her secrets to the woman over a cup of hot chocolate.

 

Hot chocolate is a magical drink.

 

Three months later she was moving into their house, getting a job at the diner they owned where she actually got to keep her wages, and she was being supported if she wanted to do extracurricular activities at school instead of simply working…she was being _supported_ for the first time in her life. She got to go to college because of them, even if it was just a two-year community college at first. But two years shifted into two more at Boston College because they have a fantastic social work program. She wanted to do something to help kids like her in the ways that her social workers never had. She’ll never make any money, but some things are more important.

 

Ruby is four years older than her, but she quickly, by Emma’s standards at least, became Emma’s best friend, the one to give her advice on anything from her break-ups to what she should wear that day. For awhile she wasn’t sure that Granny and Ruby wouldn’t be like the others, but they attempted to make it clear from the beginning that they weren’t, even if it took Emma awhile to realize that they cared for her in a way no had before.

 

When she did, her entire world changed. The lost little girl who didn’t matter and thought she never would suddenly mattered to someone, and it was…everything.

 

And then Ruby met Liam Jones, Naval Captain and all-around good guy that had Ruby acting like a teenager in love for the first time, coming home from their dates swooning about this blue-eyed gentleman who could very well sweep her off her feet. He showed up to the house one day to pick Ruby up for a date in his dress whites, and when Emma opened the door, she understood everything Ruby was talking about. He was so kind, attractive of course, but mostly he was a good man, absolutely everything that Ruby deserved.

 

They’d been dating for two years when Emma came home from class one day to find Ruby curled up on the couch and curled into herself, her body absolutely shaking as the sobs emanated from her. Emma didn’t know what happened, thought maybe she and Liam had broken up, but then when she picked up Ruby’s phone, she had seven missed calls from a Killian Jones, one answered one, and several news articles pulled up about a naval ship going up in flames, Captain Liam Jones dying along with his ship.

 

_A captain goes down with his ship._

 

Emma had never lost someone before, had never really had someone to lose, but she’d most definitely not lost someone through death, only through breakups. The only time she’d ever been in love it had been with an older guy who was basically using her for sex, preying on the little lost girl who was vulnerable and just wanted to be loved. When it ended, Emma was crushed, and Ruby and Granny were there for her and continue to be there as the scars of the past sometimes keep her from moving on with her future. But this is in no way the same. She had no idea how to comfort Ruby, how to handle this, so she simply held her, letting her tears fall onto her lap until she was finally ready to talk, telling the story almost like she was reading it off of one of those articles, no emotion as Ruby stared straight ahead at the blackness of the television.

 

The funeral was…rough. Ruby stayed in that kind of glazed over state the entire time, and all Emma knew to do was to help and to make sure that everything ran smoothly and Ruby and Liam’s brother, the Killian Jones that the calls were from, had everything they needed. The Jones brothers only had each other, so there was no family, just coworkers and neighbors, a few casual friends from what she could tell. She felt almost an immediate kinship to them, two boys who didn’t have anyone but each other, almost like she only had Ruby and Granny. Granny couldn’t attend because they couldn’t afford to close down the diner, so Ruby and Emma only had each other today, no third member to their pack. But now Killian was alone, and she couldn’t even imagine what he was going through.

 

Maybe he could be another member of their pack.

 

Two Lucases. One Swan. One Jones.

 

But right now Killian was alone, sitting by himself on a couch in his living room, the place almost bare except for the leather couch and television mounted on the wall, and Killian was staring at the blank screen in the way Ruby had been when she told Emma what had happened.

 

So she greeted him, squeaking out a hi, and the rest was history.

 

They talked throughout the day and for the rest of the night until they fell into bed with each other, something that was entirely inappropriate, but felt oh so wonderful. She’d lain awake that night regretting what she’d done, what they’d done.

 

She regretted _when_ it happened. She didn’t regret that it did.

 

He was this kind soul who didn’t need to get involved with her in any way, but he’d seemed so genuinely interested in her the morning after that she gave him her number just in case he wanted to talk, needed someone to talk to really. He didn’t call, though, not that she really expected him to. She was probably just a blip on his radar, and that was fine. It was probably for the best. She wished that he had reached out, that they could have formed some kind of relationship because she thought that they understood each other, that he understood her in the way that she understood him.

 

It was okay, though. He didn’t have to call. She didn’t know if she could be his friend anyways. Not with how things between them started. And she wasn’t ready for a relationship. Not in the slightest.

 

But then when he called months later, they went to lunch the week before she graduated from college, and somehow they became friends.

 

The best of friends, really.

 

Killian Jones is so different when he isn’t mourning, as she expects everyone to be if she’s honest with herself. The darkness was still at the edge of him, his breath lingering with rum despite the hour, but when he smiled at her, that ear-to-ear grin she’s so fond of now, she was blown away.

 

Their friendship comes slowly, and it doesn’t really develop until a year after that lunch, but they grew closer with every conversation. It wasn’t a smooth ride, the two of them dancing around each other to try not to get too close after all that had transpired between them, but despite the bumps and curves, they somehow hurdled their obstacles and became friends. Before she knew it, those conversations were happening weekly, then daily, then multiple times a day. They have a bit of routine of sorts that neither of them acknowledge. They’re always together, so much so that when their friends try to get ahold of one of them and can’t, they just call the other because they always know what the other is doing.

 

He drags her along for his morning runs every other day, and despite the fact that Killian has five years on her, he kicks her ass every damn time. It’s like he barely breaks a sweat while her clothes are so sweaty that they stick to her skin.

 

She has a key to his apartment, a different one than the one they met in. This one is much nicer, large windows that look out onto the bay and furniture in cool grays and blues that makes the place a million times nicer than her apartment. He has this couch, oh my God this couch, that is so damn comfortable that she falls asleep on it more than she falls asleep in the guest room, which is really her room. Best of all, though, he has a balcony that looks out onto the water, and on clear nights he sits out there on a hammock he fastened together so that he can look up at the stars.

 

She knows it’s where he talks to Liam, so she doesn’t always join him. But sometimes she does, wrapping her favorite blanket around her before crawling into the hammock with him so that she’s nestled against his chest with his arm wrapped around her stomach as he tells her the stories behind the constellations. It’s the closet they get to each other, and she prays for clear nights so that she can chase that closeness.

 

He is kind and funny and considerate of everyone around him, and he deserves better than the world he is living in. He deserves better than losing his parents only to lose his brother and his job later. He deserves better than falling in love only to find out that his girlfriend was cheating on him and then never having much luck with anyone later. He deserves better.

 

She didn’t deserve him when they first met.

 

And she doesn’t deserve him now.

 

She didn’t love him when they first met.

 

But she loves him now.

 

She loves him, and watching him sulk into the other room at this wedding luncheon for Ruby and Graham, him asking her not to follow, broke her heart into a million little pieces, the shards cutting on the way down.

 

Ruby pulls her off to the side and up the stairs to what Emma can only assume is Graham’s old bedroom from the mismatched decorations and dark colors mixed in with various shades of plaid that is an indicator for most teenage boys’ rooms.

 

“Is Killian okay?”

 

“What?”

 

“Killian, is he going to be okay? He seems down.”

 

“Rubes,” Emma sighs, sitting down at the edge of the bed and crossing her legs. Graham was really into the nature theme in high school. The posters of animals everywhere are kind of freaking her out. Is that a fucking stuffed animal of a wolf? “You know that this is hard for him. It’s hard for you, too, but you’ve got the whole, you know, getting married thing to focus on to keep you happy.”

 

“Does he not want to be here?”

 

“Hey,” Emma says, placing her hands over Ruby’s to comfort her from the way her voice just broke, “of course he wants to be here. He loves you.”

 

“I don’t want him to be here if he’s going to be upset the entire time.” Ruby’s eyes are wide and filled with unshed tears, and why are weddings always so damn emotional no matter what the backstory? “I don’t want him to go through that for me.”

 

“Killian’s going to be fine.” She’s not lying, but she’s not going to share all that Killian’s been going through when it comes to this weekend. He trusts her with that intimate knowledge, and she’s not going to betray his trust. “He always is. Some things just hit him harder than he expects. I cannot even begin to express how happy he is for you to be so open to finding love and being in love again.”

 

Ruby bumps her shoulder against Emma’s before laying her head there. “I love Graham with everything I have, and no part of me believes I’m replacing Liam with him because you can’t replace people, but I do still miss Liam. Almost every day. And if I forget to miss him one day, I make up for it by doubling up on the next. But he’d want me to be happy. He told me that once before he got deployed, and he’d want Killian to be happy instead of moping around.”

 

_You can’t replace people._

 

“He is happy. He has a good life. A part of it is just missing.”

 

A beat passes.

 

“You ever think you should be having this conversation with him and not me, Rubes?”

 

“I wanted to feel out how he’s doing instead of going in there blind. You sleep with him yet?”

 

“Ruby Lucas,” Emma groans, falling back against the mattress until her head hits something small and round. She pulls it out from under her neck and what the hell? Is this _another_ stuffed wolf with marble eyes? Who the hell is Ruby marrying? “We are literally talking about how he is grieving his brother, and you want to talk about that?”

 

“I mean, you slept with him the first time because he was grieving his brother so…”

 

“I did not sleep with him _because_ he was grieving his brother. That’s messed up. I still don’t even know how that happened.”

 

Ruby’s got this cheeky grin on her face, and Emma already knows what’s coming next by the way her eyes are dancing with mischief. “Well, when a man and a woman –”

 

“I know how sex works, you idiot.”

 

“Really?” Ruby teases, and Emma doesn’t know how she lucked into having this woman as her best friend. “Because I was thinking you were trying to be a virgin again for how long you’ve been celibate.”

 

“It has not been that long, and it’s also none of your business, Miss Lucas.”

 

“Please, I tell you everything about my sex life.”  


 

“I know, and I still have trouble looking at Graham sometimes.”

 

“Just, make sure he has a good time this weekend,” Ruby pleads as she takes Emma’s hand in hers. “Don’t sleep with him just to make him feel better. Do sleep with him because you both love each other and are ridiculously hot and I want Killian and Emma babies to spoil.”

 

“So you want me to sleep with him and get pregnant basically?” Ruby nods her head, and Emma rolls her eyes. “That’s messed up.”

 

“I notice you left out the being in love with each other part.”

  
  
“Because it’s not true, and I’m finished with this conversation.”

 

Emma is a lying liar who lies.

 

When they walk back downstairs Killian is sitting with everyone else, having a conversation with David while holding Leo over his shoulder, the young boy giggling, and she’s glad to see that he’s not moping right now. It could just be an act, but it’s something. He was so upset this morning that she didn’t know what to do, how to comfort him. She’s seen him like that several times over the years. Hell, she met him when he was upset, and she also made some very stupid decisions on that day.

 

Note to self and to anyone, don’t sleep with a guy you just met on the day of his brother’s funeral.

 

It may have worked out for her because she’s gained the best friend she’s ever had, but she also has a mixture of erotic memories and overriding guilt over sleeping with him. Not exactly things you want to have when dealing with your best friend. It makes things jumbled in your mind, and all Emma’s ever wanted is for things to be simple.

 

Things are never simple.

 

Especially when you know what Killian Jones looks like naked. He’s got this tattoo on his hip, a ship’s wheel right at the v that dips down to his…

 

 _So_ not the thing to be thinking about right now. So, so not the time.

 

The rest of the day goes by quickly, a blur of suits and dresses and drinks being poured into crystal glasses with which toasts are made about the happy couple. Emma’s not one for public speaking, but this is one of her best friend’s wedding, so she stands in the dining hall where the rehearsal dinner is held, only recognizing a few people because most of the attendees come from Graham’s side of the family. She’s nervous as hell, but Killian reaches over and squeezes her knee through the material of her jumpsuit, calming her. When she looks down at him, he’s smiling up at her and nodding his head in encouragement letting her know that it’s okay. It’s just a few moments of her time.

 

She had a speech prepared, practiced it for days in her apartment before they came here, but she’s honestly not sure what words spew out of her mouth. She thinks she makes a joke about Ruby being a gem, and God she hopes that people laughed. She has no idea. But finally it’s over, and she knows that people clap and suddenly Ruby’s hugging her and mumbling about how she’s glad she’s wearing waterproof makeup.

 

When she sits back down at the table Killian kisses her cheek, and she closes her eyes at the feeling of his lips on her skin, savoring just that small contact for both herself and for him. He seems to be in better spirits than he was earlier, and the ride home after the rehearsal dinner is silent, both of them falling asleep for a few moments before their Uber slams the breaks in front of their hotel, jerking the two of them forward and into awareness.

 

“Oh God,” she moans when they get the hotel room and she slips out her shoes, immediately rubbing at the arches from how swollen they are after a day of standing on her feet in stilettos.

 

“Your feet hurt?”  


 

“You have no idea.”

 

She looks up to see Killian tick his finger behind his ear after shedding his suit jacket and undoing a few more buttons on his shirt so more of that wonderful chest hair is exposed. “Do you want me to rub them for you?”

 

“Killian Jones, I would love you forever if you did that for me.”

 

He awkwardly chuckles, his eyes darting away from her before he settles down on the bed, and she probably shouldn’t have phrased it like that but it’s just a saying. She wasn’t promising to love him forever in actuality. Though she thinks she probably will. She has for awhile now.

 

She had sex with him for the first time after a funeral. She’s not going to tell him she loves him at a wedding. That’s a weird enough situation as is.

 

Would probably make a fantastic movie, though.

 

Killian sits against the headboard and she props her feet in his lap so that he can work at the tenderness while she tries to find something to watch on the television. He’s working magic with his fingers. _He’s worked magic with those fingers before._ She could fall asleep like this, probably should fall asleep like this, but as relaxing as this is, it’s still Killian’s skin touching hers, her entire body sparking in desire by the callousness of his fingers running against her skin.

 

“What time do I need to have you at the venue tomorrow?”

 

“Nine.”

 

“For a fucking seven o’clock wedding? What am I supposed to do all day?”

 

She props herself up on her shoulders so that she can look at him. “Hang out with me?”

 

“While you lasses are getting dressed?”

 

“Good point,” she sighs, moving her feet out of his grasp so that she can sit on her calves next to Killian, facing him instead of the television. “It’s a big venue. You can go for a walk. I’ll give you my phone to use my data to watch Netflix if the wifi is bad, and I will come hang out with you as often as I can until David gets there with Leo. Then you’ll have a friend.”

 

She reaches forward to hold his left hand, running her fingers over the pink scars that line it. He’s never told her exactly what happened. His eyes always darken, sometimes in anger and sometimes in despair. She’s never sure which Killian reaction she’s going to get, but one day he very tenderly told her that he didn’t allow people to touch the scars but that it’s soothing when someone runs the pads of their fingers against the raised skin. She wanted to kiss the scars, kiss the pain away, on the day they met, but she never got the opportunity to do that. And she still hasn’t, so instead she runs her fingers over his hand before squeezing it and crawling out of the bed.

 

After she changes out of her jumpsuit, stripping down and only putting on a large t-shirt to sleep in, she makes her way back out into the bedroom to find that Killian has fallen asleep in what’s left of his suit, quiet snores emanating from his lips. He must be exhausted, both the physical and emotional strain of this weekend weighing him down so much that he couldn’t be bothered to change his clothes or brush his teeth. So she simply turns off the light, setting her phone alarm before crawling into her bed and falling asleep, too.

 

Just with much more effort.

 

The next morning seems to happen in a blur, her alarm ringing in her ears as she scrambles out of bed and into the shower, not even taking the time to shave her legs because it’s a long dress anyways and she shaved two days ago. Killian obviously loses his mind and decides to drive instead of taking an Uber or the subway, so her anxiety rises as she watches him stop and start with all of the other New York drivers. Boston can be bad, but it’s nothing like this. This makes her nervous, and she just wants to be at the venue, safe and sound before she dies at a much younger age than she was ever planning on.

 

Not that she was planning her death.

 

They finally, _finally_ get there

 

“Holy fuck,” Killian exhales when they pull up to the mansion for the first time since they didn’t actually rehearse for the wedding here because of a scheduling conflict, vibrant green grass spreading out across the stoned wall estate in a way that no grass should be green at this time of the year. “Is this a castle?”

 

“Do we have castles in America?”

 

“It looks like it. Why the hell are they getting married outside in the winter if there’s this building? Also, what do Graham’s parents do because I very much doubt that Granny is paying for this?”

 

“They’re both investment bankers who basically hit the jackpot and then got out of the game.”

 

“Do you feel poor right now?”

 

“Extremely. I don’t think I could afford to rent out this place for five minutes.”

 

Killian walks her to the bridal suite, past hallways of ornate paneling and frankly kind of creepy portraits. If suits of armor and gold-platted light fixtures were here, she’d think that this actually was a castle, especially with the plush red carpet under her feet. The ballroom and backyard in this place must be something else because this is not a place Emma would want to get married. The dark colors adorning the hallways makes her feel more like she’s in one of those mansions in horror movies rather than a place where one wants to start a new chapter in his or her life.

 

When they start to hear chatter she knows they’ve finally found the room, so Killian hands her the garment bag with her dress before nodding his head and beginning to walk away.

 

“Where are you going?”

 

“To see if there are any secret passageways. I’ll see you when you’re all pretty, darling.”

 

“Hey!” she laughs, grabbing onto his wrist to try to pull him closer. Instead he locks his legs so that she can’t move him at all and she ends up being the one tugged into her personal space, standing up on her toes so that she can wrap her arms around his neck, her fingers playing at the hair at the nape of his neck as the garment bag falls to the ground. “Are you saying I’m not pretty now?”

 

“A right atrocity, Swan.”

 

She’s lost in his eyes, the crystal blue staring down at her so much that she doesn’t even realize that he’s reaching around behind her and patting her ass, making her squeal and back away from him so that she can catch the breath that was just scared out of her.

 

“What the hell was that, Jones?”

 

He shrugs his shoulders, winking at her before walking down the hallway, doing a little spin move and waving at her when he turns a corner, and then he’s gone while she’s standing in the hallway with a smile on her face.

 

He’s an idiot. He’s so serious all of the time, never really allowing himself to be carefree, but he can be carefree with her. She doesn’t know what it is about her that makes him comfortable, but she doesn’t want to question it too much. If her presence makes him happier somehow, she’ll stay around him always. She’d do that anyways.

 

She didn’t know him before Liam died. She didn’t get to know what he was like when he had his brother, but from the stories she heard he was so full of life, so much more than he is now. He was the life of any event, always joking around or dancing even when there wasn’t any music. Now he’s reserved in public, always playing the part of former Navy man who knows the time and place to be fun, never letting loose unless he’s truly comfortable around someone.

 

It’s not who Killian is. She knows this. She sees how he is when he’s with her. He’s carefree, if not the tiniest bit reserved. He’s always cracking jokes, and it doesn’t matter if they’re any good or not. He doesn’t care. He’ll tell them anyways. He’ll talk for hours if you find something that he’s interested in or give him a shot of tequila instead of his preferred rum. He loves kids, and he’s good with them, too. When Leo was born, he was enthralled from the first time he held him, smiling up at her and whispering _Swan, he’s so small I love him_. Her heart fluttered, and she almost cried over seeing him purely happy with no walls. She knows that she’s the last person who should be talking about living without walls, but even with her own, maybe especially with her own, she can appreciate seeing Killian live free of his.

 

He makes her live free of hers.

 

When she does finally walk into the bridal suite, she’s greeted with mimosas and bagels, the girls obviously having been drinking since early this morning. Usually she’s all for that, but she’s got to pace herself today. She can’t start drinking at nine in the morning and expect to be anywhere near sober later. She’s not twenty-two anymore, and as much as she’d like to indulge, she has to drive home to Boston in the morning.

 

Well, Killian is driving home, but she doesn’t want a hangover.

 

“Ems,” Ruby squeals, getting up from where she was lounging on a couch, “what the hell took you so long? You have a long night with that hot boyfriend of yours? He keep you in bed a little too long this morning?”

 

She’s about to protest, even if she knows she shouldn’t engage with Ruby on this, but then one of the bridesmaids she doesn’t know speaks. Aurora? Ashley?

 

“Oh my God you guys! Did any of you see that hot guy at the rehearsal dinner?”

 

“The one with the blue suit that matched his eyes and the stubble that made him fifty shades of hot?”

 

She realizes that the first one was Ashley and the second one was Aurora, and she kind of hates them both right now because they’re talking about Killian. She already knows.

 

“Is he one of the groomsmen, Rubes?” Ashley asks, taking a sip of her mimosa before actually batting her eyelashes and twisting her hair around her finger. “Because he didn’t have a ring on his finger. I checked. So I figured he probably wasn’t the date of someone and he was sitting at one of the head tables.”

 

Emma can feel Ruby’s eyes on her, and when she finally does look at her, Emma shakes her head from side to side.

 

“That’s Liam’s brother, and he’s very much taken.”

 

They all seem to deflate at that, both at the mention of Liam and at the fact that Killian is taken. She doesn’t know why Ruby said that. She should have told them he was single. He should have the opportunity to find love again, even if it would break her.

 

“But there was no ring.”

 

“Just because there’s no ring doesn’t mean he’s not very much in love with someone…hey, Ems. How are you doing your hair today?”

 

It’s a tactic to change the subject if she’s ever seen one, but she cannot really see past the part where Ruby said Killian is very much in love with someone.

 

She knows that Ruby thinks Killian’s in love with her, but she really has a hard time believing it. They’re just friends, no matter how much her heart protests.


	3. Chapter Three

**Sixteen Years Ago:**

 “Happy eighteenth birthday, Killian.”

 

Liam is being bloody loud right now, barging into his room at what has to be the ass crack of dawn to wish him a happy birthday like this couldn’t wait until Killian woke up for school.

 

“Go away.”

 

“You’re awfully touchy this morning,” Liam teases, moving to sit at the edge of Killian’s bed and tapping at where Killian’s feet hang off the end of the mattress.

 

“It’s only,” he reaches to twist his alarm clock around him to see the time, “four forty in the morning. My God, Liam. What the hell could have driven you to wake me up at this time? Do you have a – oh…You have to leave, don’t you?”

 

The realization comes crashing down around him, and suddenly he’s much more awake than he was a moment ago. He just got his brother back, and now he has to leave again.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“No, it’s okay.”

 

_It’s not okay._

 

“It’s not, brother,” Liam sighs, fiddling with something in his hands. “I got leave to spend time with you on your birthday, and I can’t even spend it with you.”

 

“We got the past week together. I’d trade all of my birthdays for the rest of time for that.”

 

Liam chuckles under his breath before dropping a gold chain onto Killian’s stomach, and when Killian picks it up, he sees at the end is their mother’s wedding band, one of a marriage that was broken but a woman who was whole…until the cancer took her and left them alone. So it’s a ring that he’s always thought represented more sadness than hope, but Liam’s held onto it like a beacon of that hope for all these years.

 

“Why are you handing this to me?”

 

Liam shrugs before placing his hand next to Killian’s. “It’s your birthday gift.”

 

“I just – I don’t understand,” he mumbles, trying to figure out what exactly is going on, this morning already different than he expected for his eighteenth birthday. “This doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to you.”

 

“I’m going to tell you something, little brother.”

 

“Younger brother,” Killian corrects, and he can see Liam’s smile despite the darkness of the room. “I’m officially an adult now, though I can’t bloody drink here.”

 

Liam laughs, before patting Killian’s leg through his comforter. “I’m giving you this ring because you, _younger_ brother, are the _big_ love of my life. Women may come and go for both of us, but you and me, we’re forever, bud. You are forever for me, and if one day you find another forever, someone who you love with everything you have, maybe even more than your life itself, then you give her this ring, okay?”

 

Killian doesn’t understand what’s going on, but he nods his head, taking the chain and slipping it over his head so that the ring rests at his chest.

 

“I love you, Liam.”

 

“I love you, too, Killian.”

 

**Eight Years Ago:**

 “So you’re telling me,” Emma laughs, her feet propped up on the coffee table, heels long discarded in the corner of the living room, “that you lost a bet about if you could go a month only drinking water and when you lost you had to go around asking girls out with one side of your beard shaved?”

 

“Yes ma’am,” he confirms, his feet propped up next to hers, his dress shoes long discarded as well. His socks have anchors on them, and even if he was still in his Navy-issued uniform, since he was no longer part of the organization as of three days ago, he could wear whatever damn socks he wanted. At least, that’s what he told her when she told him she liked them. “But it didn’t count if they asked me about the facial hair situation.”

 

“Why in the world did that matter?”

 

“Because then I could tell them about the bet and they’d say yes just to save me from the future embarrassment. You know, if they were a kind enough soul. And we weren’t allowed to have facial hair, so I had to avoid my commanding officer for two weeks while I was growing it out for this bloody thing.”

 

She studies him for a moment, twisting her body on the couch so that she’s facing him instead of their feet. He has Liam’s eyes, but they’re…bluer somehow. And where Liam you looked at him and he was basically the human form of a stuffed bear, Killian was more a real one, beautiful to look at but something you needed to stay far, far away from. But that didn’t keep her from leaning closer, her hand reaching up to run across his jaw, feeling the hard bristles of his three-day scruff over the softness of his skin. She doesn’t really know who makes the first move, but suddenly his lips are on hers, warm and soft contrasting against the abrasiveness of his facial hair. He almost immediately puts his hand in her hair, pulling her lips closer to him and moving against her, his tongue running across the seam of her lips without much preamble.

 

That’s when she pulls back, not because she wants to, but because if her tongue tangles with his, she may never be able to stop. She doesn’t move far, though, resting her forehead against Killian’s while he moves his thumb to rub over her chin.

 

“Emma,” he whispers, his breath hot as it ghosts over her lips, “what are we doing? Where’s Ruby?”

 

“Ruby went to stay with Granny. She asked to be alone.”

 

“Is she okay?”

 

“What do you think?”

 

He manages to laugh, his lips brushing over hers, before he closes his eyes, long, dark eyelashes brushing against his cheekbones.

 

“You didn’t answer my other question.”

 

A long beat passes before his eyes flutter open and his lips tick up on one side.

 

“What do you want to be doing?”

 

He doesn’t answer her, diving back in and thrusting his tongue between her lips without warning, running it against her teeth before she slides her tongue against his, the sensations shooting through her like tiny bursts of fireworks that have been lit but haven’t gone off.

 

They go off when Killian reaches down to her hips and pulls her onto his lap, her knees falling to either side as her dress rides up her thighs to expose her legs with the help of Killian’s hand cupping the back of her leg while the other is still buried in her hair. She loves when people play with her hair, especially the strands at her neck, and she swears she doesn’t whimper when Killian tugs at the hair there, but she knows that she does by the way Killian groans and bucks his hips up into hers.

 

Now that…that feels a thousand times better than his hand in her hair. She can tell he’s already mostly aroused, and she cannot wait to find out what he’s like when he’s fully aroused, his hardness brushing against her softness. She has a moment where she thinks they shouldn’t be doing this, but it quickly fades away when Killian moves away from her mouth to run his lips against her jaw, his teeth and his tongue trailing after his lips as he moves back to that sensitive spot behind her ear.

 

Emma begins rolling her hips into Killian’s, and the friction is fucking incredible. She would literally dry hump to completion if she didn’t have another option, but she can _feel him_ straining through his dress pants. She can feel him through his dress pants much more prominently now, and she _really_ wants to fuck him right now, her mind clear of all other thoughts while it’s full of lust.

 

“Killian,” she gasps when he bites down on her earlobe, his hands inching over her upper thighs until he’s under her dress and cupping her ass through her underwear while she runs her hands over his shoulders, still rolling her hips against his. “Killian, please.”

 

“Please what?” he whispers against her lips, his voice deep and husky and as seductive as a voice can be.

 

_She is so out of her league right now._

“Please,” she does a very calculated roll of her hips, and his head falls back against the wall, the underside of his jaw right in front of her eyes so she leans forward to run her tongue against it. “Please fuck me.”

 

“If the lady insists.”

 

Before she even knows it, he’s tightening his hold on her ass and standing from the couch, her arms automatically going around his shoulders so that she doesn’t fall and bust her ass. That would be really unfortunate right now. It’s not a long walk from the living room to his bedroom, but she starts unbuttoning his shirt while they move, until she gets down to his mid-stomach and can’t go any further from how tightly their bodies are pressed together.

 

Suddenly her back is against his bedroom door, a shocked gasp escaping at the harsh contact, and he’s jutting his hips up into her while his mouth plunders her, aggressive and hot and like a man who could do wonderful things to her body.

 

He’s got complete control of the situation right now until she manages to get her hand snaked down between them to grab his length through his dress pants, running her fingers up and down until Killian stops kissing her.

 

“Oh fuck,” he breathes, practically panting before he leans his head against her shoulder.

 

“That’s what I’m trying to do here, Jones.”

 

He laughs against her neck before placing what has to be the most gentle kiss against it, and before she even gets the chance to savor that, he’s moving to toss her down on the bed, her body bouncing against the mattress while Killian stands above her, shucking his shirt to the floor and taking his belt off while she reaches around the unzip the back of her dress, throwing it to the floor along with her bra because why the hell not?

 

Killian is staring at her now, his crystal blue eyes blown black as he stares down at her. “You’re gorgeous, love. So beautiful.”

 

He’s got a fucking ship’s wheel on his lower hip, and she’s definitely running her tongue along that later. 

 

She can feel the blush rise to her cheeks and spread across her chest, but then he’s leaning forward and palming her breasts, testing the weight of them in a move that’s probably much more for him than for her. But then his mouth lands on one nipple while he rubs his fingers over the other hard peak, and she arches her back up into his chest. That’s definitely for her.

 

It all goes quickly from there. Killian hooks his fingers into her underwear and slides them down her legs before cupping her mound, his fingers teasing at her folds so that he can see how very ready she is for him and _oh God_ is she ready for him. There’s a condom slid on and then a cock slid in, her walls fluttering around his length as he pushes into her and then pulls out, a dragging that is so pleasurable she might faint, and he captures her whimper with his lips. He’s on his knees on the mattress with his hands holding her ass up, and every thrust is full of undeniable pleasure. It goes on like that for awhile until he pulls out of her and lays back onto the bed, encouraging her to straddle his hips until she slides down onto him, rolling her hips over his while she rests her hands against his shoulders, her hair curtaining them in their own private curtain of ecstasy.

 

She didn’t even know that she was so keyed up, and how could she not have, because after Killian pinches her clit one time, she’s falling apart and muffling her scream of his name into the skin of his shoulder, biting at his pulse point so roughly that she knows it’ll leave a bruise.

 

Killian only takes a few minutes more, and his face when he comes is something else, almost like he’s pained when all he feels is pleasure. It’s not until the next morning when she wakes up that she realizes he might have also be pained. The man just lost his brother, and she fucked him on the day of the funeral. It’s wrong, and she doesn’t know how to feel about it.

 

He’s got his arm wrapped around her stomach, his chin nestled into shoulder, and she tries to flip over so that she can look at him, to see him in the light of day. He looks like he’s not in pain while he sleeps, and she knows that when he wakes all of the pain is going to crash around him. She doesn’t want him to wake for that purpose alone.

 

Her hands ghost over his cheeks, her thumb running against this scar he has on his cheek. That’s when his eyes flutter open, and she can see the moment his eyes register her and then when he remembers what’s happening in his life. His eyes are so blue, in more ways than one, and she hates the second reason for it.

 

“Hey,” she whispers in greeting, the light from the curtains peeking through the window.

 

“Hello, beautiful,” he whispers, and he looks like he really means it. He’s a good guy. He really is, but they probably shouldn’t have slept together like that.  

 

“Killian, we shouldn’t have done what we did.”

 

She kisses his jaw even as she says the words.

 

His eyes flutter closed, the lashes still dark against his skin.

 

“I know.”

 

She’s still running her hands across his face, like she’s looking for something that proves he’s going to be okay, and he’s still got her wrapped in his arms, his grip tightening. She doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know what to say, but then the words come to her and she means them despite everything screaming at her that’s different.

 

“Can we…can we be friends?”

 

“Of course, Swan.”

 

She leaves him with her number before going to work at the diner, surprised to see Ruby waitressing when she gets there. She’s supposed to have the week off, the whole month really.

 

“Rubes,” she grabs her arm behind the counter, pulling her away from the drink machine, “what are you doing here?”

 

“I’m driving myself crazy sitting at home. I enjoy the work.” Ruby pulls her into the back, away from the customers and into the storage room. “Where the hell were you last night? You didn’t come home.”

 

“Nowhere.”

 

Ruby studies her for a moment, her eyes basically peering into Emma’s soul, and suddenly Emma can feel the heat of every place Killian touched her last night.

 

“You had sex.”

 

“I did not.”

 

“Your hair is still matted in the back, there’s the slightest bit of beard burn and then there’s the…oh my God, Ems, you fucked baby Jones.”

 

Well crap.

 

“How the hell could you possibly know that?”

 

“Because all of the evidence points to that, and you guys were awfully close yesterday on the couch.”

 

“We were talking.”

 

“And then you were fucking.”

 

“Ruby.”

 

“Emma.”

 

Her defensiveness deflates, and her shoulders sag forward at the realization that not only did she sleep with Killian on the day of his brother’s funeral, but she slept with Ruby’s dead boyfriend’s brother when Ruby was grieving, too.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“Why the hell are you sorry?”

 

“Because,” Emma groans, reaching up to try to tame the hair she thought she’d contained, “you just lost Liam, and here I am sleeping with his brother.”

 

“Ems, me losing Liam doesn’t mean that you can’t be happy. If you want to sleep with baby Jones, sleep with him. Just maybe don’t fuck him at a funeral again. He’s probably not totally in his right mind. I know I’m not.”

 

“Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

 

“I don’t think it was your brain that was doing the thinking.” Ruby wraps her arms around Emma so quickly and so fiercely that Emma’s not sure what’s happening. “I love you, Ems. You have been my savior lately, and I’m going to get through this. Killian will too. Don’t make yourself feel guilty for this, okay?”

 

“Okay.”

 

**Five Years Ago:**

 “She is fucking _married_ , Killian,” Emma yells, tears stinging in both of their eyes as they really go at it in the stairwell of David and Mary Margaret’s apartment.

 

He’d told Emma about finding Milah in bed with someone, her husband to be exact, a week ago, and she’d nursed a bottle of rum with him, making sure that he drank plenty of water so he wouldn’t be wasted at work the next day. It had been…awful walking into Milah’s apartment only to discover her being intimate with another man who gladly supplied that he was her husband with this smile on his face that made Killian’s skin crawl.

 

He’d been devastated, his already broken heart crushed even further, and all he wanted to do was get fucking hammered and possibly bash in a few heads. Possibly even a few walls, but he’d learned from the past that hitting things didn’t solve his problems. Instead he called Emma who came over with a pint of rocky road ice cream (her favorite flavor) and a bottle of his favorite brand of rum.

 

“Alcohol and ice cream, Swan?”

 

“It’s what helped me through my last breakup.”

 

“That bastard was a prick.”

 

“Yeah, well, so was Milah.”

 

He’s obviously not over it. He’d loved her, maybe he still loves her, but he has absolutely no idea what has possessed Emma to pull him away from dinner to yell at him in a damn stairwell where there’s no air-conditioning and their voices are echoing up ten floors. This was supposed to be their last dinner with David and Mary Margaret before they moved to Maine, and he’s got no clue why Emma is rubbing salt in his wound.

 

“I damn well know that, Emma,” he spits, backing up against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest. “But I don’t know why the hell you’re reminding me of this fact when I think about it every damn day.”

 

“Because you’re still talking to her, you idiot! Are you asking to get hurt again?”

 

“I’m not bloody talking to her.”

 

Emma huffs. Her eyes roll. “I’m not stupid. I saw the text.”

 

_What text?_

 

“What text?”

 

“The one she sent that asked if you were coming over tonight.”

 

Oh. That text.

 

“Fuck, love,” he runs his hand through his hair before sliding down the wall to sit on the concrete floor of the stairwell, not caring how disgusting it is. “She texts me multiple times a day like things are normal. I’ve got no idea why. I promise I’m not still seeing her. I don’t bloody hate myself.”

 

He sees Emma’s lips part as the realization crosses her face and she crosses the landing to slide down the wall and sit next to him, his arm instinctively wrapping around her shoulder and tugging her closer.

 

“I’m sorry that I yelled.”

 

“Tis nothing, love. I understand why you were pissed. I would have been too if the situation was reversed. I should have blocked her number.”

 

She rests her head on his shoulder, and he can feel the almost instant relief that courses through him at the feel of her hair against his cheek.

 

“Why didn’t you?”

 

“I don’t know,” he sighs, resting his head on top of hers while he fiddles with the edges of his Henley. “I guess I didn’t want it to be over.”

 

Emma sighs, and he can practically feel her exhale run throughout his body. He’s about to lectured, and he deserves it. He should have blocked the damn number.

 

“Killian, that wasn’t a healthy relationship. And I know that’s the pot calling the kettle black with me saying it with Neal and August and all that, but you were the woman’s man on the side. She is married, and she didn’t have any intention of leaving him or loving you. I know those words sting, but they needed to be said. You can hate me if you want. I just want you to be happy.”

 

“I could never hate you, Emma Swan.”

  

**Three Years Ago:**

“Jones, you are slacking this morning,” Emma yells back to him as she sprints ahead, rounding a corner in the park only to be practically tackled by the man she thought was several lengths behind her, their sweaty bodies crashing together as his arms wrap around her waist and he throws her over his shoulder like she isn’t a grown-ass woman.

 

“Am I slacking now?” he questions as he carries her along the gravel path, getting several strange looks along the way from onlookers wondering why a man is carrying her through a public park. “Don’t worry about it, ladies,” he tells a group of elderly women powerwalking, “it’s just my girlfriend. She thought she was a faster sprinter than I am and was going to win our little race.”

 

She is _not_ his girlfriend, and she so _was_ going to win their race.

 

“Oh, isn’t she a lucky lady to have a dashing boyfriend like you? So handsome.”

 

“Hear that, darling?” He slides her down so that her feet rest on the ground, sliding his arm around her waist to keep up this insipid rouse that has her heart beating at a pace quicker than when she was running a moment ago. “These lovely ladies think I’m handsome, dashing even.”

 

“You women stroke his ego too much,” she jokes, her voice high pitched and far from natural as she leans into Killian’s side, patting his chest, his chain having fallen out of his t-shirt, as they stand there.

 

“We stroke his ego, and you get to stroke something else, dear.”

 

She almost chokes on her own saliva as the women walk away, and she cannot fucking breathe. That woman had to be seventy, and she just made a very obvious innuendo about Emma giving Killian a hand job. _Oh my God._

“Did that woman just?”

 

“Yep.”

 

“About you giving me a, uh, a – ”

 

“Yep.”

 

“Huh.” Killian runs his hands through his hair, the sweat moving across the strands before he shakes it out. “You want to go eat donuts and drink copious amounts of coffee.”

 

“Only if you’re buying.”

 

“I wouldn’t have it any other way, Swan.”

 

They begin jogging again, a slow pace as their heart rates had slowed from their earlier break. That is until Emma’s foot hits an uneven piece of gravel, and she goes tumbling to the ground, her ankle throbbing as she immediately goes to grab it. Something twisted and it’s…it’s not good.

 

“Fuck,” she cries, picking herself up off the gravel only see little bits of rock ingrained in her palms. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck.”

 

“Emma, are you okay?”

 

Killian’s squatting down in front of her now, concern evident in his eyes from the way they widen before focusing on different parts of her, analyzing the damage. No she’s not okay. This hurts. She doesn’t know if it’s the shock of falling or what, but this hurts more than she expected. She doesn’t think she broke anything, but it sure feels like something went the wrong way. She’s pretty sure her ankle is not supposed to turn like that.

 

“Obviously not.” She reaches down to touch her ankle and lets out a sharp hiss when she makes contact. “I don’t think it’s broken, but I don’t want to walk on it.”

 

“Well, what do you want to do?”

 

“I want you to call an Uber and get me to my apartment so that I can ice it.”

 

They do manage to get her back to her apartment, Emma leaning against Killian’s side as she has to fucking hop out of the park like a kid playing hopscotch. Killian practically babies her the rest of the afternoon, making sure that her foot is always elevated and that the ice stays wrapped around her ankle, replenished every few hours when the ice pack melts.

 

She hates not being able to do anything herself. It’s driving her crazy that every time she moves to get up and fix herself a glass of water, Killian practically flies off the couch and into her kitchen. Her living room and her kitchen are in the same damn room. She can make it that far.

 

But Killian doesn’t let her. He doesn’t let her do anything, and eventually she just lets it happen, even asking him if he’ll run to the convenience store down the road to get her some ice cream. He does, but it’s his favorite flavor instead of hers, and he’s a cheeky bastard using her own move against her.

 

She doesn’t have a guest room at her apartment like Killian does at his, so he either sleeps on her couch or in her room when he stays over and that night he happens to stay in her room. Flashes of their night together always run through her mind when he stays over, but unlike that night, he stays on the opposite side of the bed, their bodies nowhere near each other with her laptop in between the two of them. She’s lost in an episode of Outlander when she feels a metal chain against her stomach, and when she looks down, the gold necklace with Liam’s ring rests on her skin and she has no idea why.

 

“Killian?” she whispers, scared to speak at a louder volume.

 

“Mhm?”

 

“Why is Liam’s ring on my stomach?”

 

He’s not looking over at her, and she really needs him to. She needs the reassurance of his blue eyes because she’s not sure what the hell is happening. That is Killian’s most prized possession. He never takes it off, and suddenly it’s resting against her skin.

 

“I want you to have it.”

 

She shoots up so quickly that she jerks her leg, pain coursing through her at the harsh, sudden movement.

 

“Ow, shit that hurts.”

 

He does finally look over at her then, and his eyes are glassy, water pooling in them, and she has no idea why. She assumes it’s not because her rolled ankle is hurting her. That would be dramatic, even for him.

 

“Killian,” she closes the laptop and turns as much as she can without disturbing her ankle, “I need you to tell me what’s happening right now. You’re upset about something, and suddenly you want me to have your brother’s ring. In no way do I deserve that.”

 

“Emma, I need you to take it and not ask me any questions. But if you really don’t want it, I’ll take it back.”

 

She studies him for a moment before nodding her head, slipping the chain over her neck and watching it fall across her chest, the ring resting between her breasts, a heavy weight despite the lightness of the jewelry.

 

“Thank you,” she murmurs later that night when she’s sure Killian is asleep. She doesn’t know what has possibly possessed him to give her Liam’s ring, but he was obviously emotional about it and she didn’t want to push him too much. Just like he knows when and when not to push her, she knows when to do the same with him. And that was not a moment to push Killian.

 

“You’re welcome,” Killian whispers, shocking her that he was awake and not asleep, blush rising in her cheeks that she’s thankful the darkness of the room conceals. When Killian grabs her hand and kisses her knuckles, she feels sparks shock her entire body at his lips touching her skin.

 

Hell, she’s never been more thankful for the lights to be turned off, as the room is shrouded in darkness and is no longer blue.

 

  **Today:**

 Emma was right when she said that this estate would have plenty of places to explore, the intricate hallways alone enough to distract him from how many hours he has alone while Emma gets ready with Ruby and all of the other bridesmaids. But it’s a nice day outside despite the winter chill, so he decides to explore the gardens outside, walking along the cobblestone paths that reside over the artificially green grass and white winter flowers until he reaches the lake at the backend of the property and settles onto a bench facing the water.

 

He’s normally not one for a lot of pictures, but he pulls his phone out of his jacket pocket and snaps a picture of the water, the sun making it glisten even through the phone screen. Liam would love this. He loved the water more than anyone Killian knows, and as much as Killian loves it, nothing compares to his brother’s feelings for it. His brother was made to live out on the water, and even if he ultimately came to his end there, he died doing what he loved. It’s taken a long time for Killian to accept that, and as hard as Liam’s death hits him some days, yesterday included, he tries to remember that as he stares out onto the mostly still lake.

 

He gazes down at the ground, his feet scuffing up against the ground, and he sees the scars on his left hand glow bright red as a result of the nip in the air and the sunshine beating down on him. Most people think he got the scars in the accident that led to Liam’s death, but he didn’t. He wasn’t even on board the ship that day. Instead he had been filling out paperwork he’d neglected for his promotion in one of the Navy’s land-based offices. He should have been with Liam. He should have been able to help as the ship burst into flames when one of their engines malfunctioned, but he was in a damn office. He was in a damn office, and when he was told the news over a phone call, he punched a mirror in the bathroom, the glass shards cutting his hand and up his forearm.

 

He was an idiot for doing that, and he’s reminded of it every time he looks down at his left arm. He’s often thought of getting another tattoo, the lone ship’s wheel on his hip not seeming to be nearly enough, but his skin has given him a tattoo to remind him of that day and of his brother. Who needs ink when you’ve already got your own markings?

 

Killian doesn’t do this often, at least not anymore, preferring to talk to his brother when reclining in the hammock on his balcony, the stars shining up above him like the only constant he’s ever had in his life. And even those change.

 

“Hi,” he croaks, speaking so quietly even though he knows he’s the only person out here. His breath is visible in the air, and it really is too damn cold for him to be out here now that he’s sitting still. “I, um, I’m at Ruby’s wedding today, brother, and it’s a bit weird that you’re not here, too. I know you wanted to marry her someday, and I’m sorry that you couldn’t, LJ. But I know you’d be happy for her. You were always good like that, reasonable in all of the ways that I’m not.”

 

Suddenly a family of swans move across the water, and he idly wonders if they should even still be in New York in January. Is it too cold for them? He’s not really sure, knowing nothing about swans…well, except for the one. That causes a chuckle to pass through his lips, and he must look like a crazy man out here talking to the air and laughing to himself.

 

“Emma’s here, too, Liam, and I know you knew her, but I wish you knew her now. She’s my everything, and I don’t think I would have made it through all of this without her. And I guess I have you to thank for her. I’d have likely never met her without you.”

 

“But I, uh – ” his voice breaks, cracking like it did when he was a teenager, “I just wanted to say that I love you, LJ, and even if you can’t be here physically, you’re with me always. And with Ruby, too. Even with Emma as she wears your ring, mother’s ring. Thanks for still watching over me.”

 

Killian spends a bit longer staring out at the lake, letting his conversation with his brother sink down on him but not drown him. It’s comforting to talk to Liam, even if he doesn’t talk back, and Killian knows that he needed to do that. Today just wouldn’t be right without it.

 

When he looks down at his watch, it’s almost noon, hours having passed since he left Emma to get ready, and that explains why his hands feel numb. So he makes his way back toward the building, seeing that white tents and chairs are being set up outside for the reception, and this really is quite the event, isn’t it?

 

He reaches the lasses’ dressing room, knocking on the door and announcing himself before he hears a “come in” and opens the door to see Emma having her hair pinned up into some kind of intricate braid.

 

“Hey, Killian,” Ruby greets, and she immediately envelops him in a hug, her small frame wrapping around his waist before she releases him and goes back to sit next to Emma. “Do you need something?”

 

“Aye,” he answers, nodding his head at Emma while her face scrunches because the hairdresser seems to be pulling at her stands a bit too harshly. “I was wondering if I could get lunch with Emma.”

 

He can feel the eyes of some of the other women staring at him while he looks to Emma, and it makes him uncomfortable, a slight redness rising in his cheeks as he aches to get out of the room the longer their gazes go own. He used to revel in women staring at him, but now the only one he cares about his the blonde having her hair sprayed down with hair spray.

 

“Yeah, that sounds great,” Emma finally answers. “Give me ten minutes, and then we’ll go steal some food from the kitchen. Granny cooked.”

 

Emma finds him waiting in the hallway in seven minutes, and she looks stunning, her hair falling down one side of her shoulder in a long braid that reaches all the way to the crown of her head and her eyes lined in black and lips painted in red. She’s going to have to reapply her lipstick after they eat, so he’s not too sure why she’s already got it on, especially because she’s walking through the hallways with him barefoot in nothing but her leggings and one of his button-downs that he didn’t realize she’d swiped.

 

It looks good. Really good.

 

After several minutes they manage to find the kitchen, and the caterers are already running around preparing the food for tonight. But on the kitchen counter rests a bag from Granny’s diner, and he grabs the whole thing before walking with Emma back to the hallway and turning into a dining hall so that they can eat. It’s a bit odd sitting in such a large hall meant for hundreds of people with just the two of them sitting at a corner table.

 

“So what have you been doing?” Emma asks as she takes a bite of her sandwich. “Did you find David and Leo?”

 

“I didn’t even know they were here yet, so that answers that question. I just walked around. There’s a beautiful lake toward the backend of the estate. We’ll have to go look at it once you’re clothed a bit warmer.”

 

They don’t really talk much, not having much to say and knowing that their silences with each other are comfortable more often than not. Emma seems a bit off, and he’s not sure why. It’s just a feeling that he gets deep in his stomach, and he can’t shake it throughout the rest of their meal, especially when their comfortable silence suddenly seems strained the more time that passes.

 

Eventually Ruby calls her back to the room with the bag of food for everyone else, and when he offers to carry the bag for her, she simply shakes him off and walks back down the hallways by herself, turning the corner and disappearing from sight.


	4. Chapter Four

When Killian drops Emma back off with Ruby and the rest of the bridesmaids, or really when she runs away from him down the hallway because her mind is all over the place and just looking at him made her more confused than anything in the world, they’re all thrilled to see the bag of food, practically tearing it apart before she can place it on the table at the edge of the room. Half of them moan while they’re eating, mumbling something about not having eaten for days to fit into the dresses, and she knows that none of that is true because she saw them eating both last night and this morning. Whatever, it doesn’t matter anyways. She just really wishes people wouldn’t make sex noises when eating food. She’s not saying she’s never done it, but some of these are a bit exaggerated.

 

Of course, sometimes sex noises during actual sex are a bit exaggerated.

 

It seems to take eons for everyone to finish getting ready, the next two hours passing at a snail’s pace, but Granny eventually comes in the room right as it’s time to help Ruby into her dress, and while the other girls are crowding around the three of them, this is more of a family moment than anything. They’ve all been through different versions of hell both separately and together, and while a wedding doesn’t always guarantee a happy ending, this seems like one, the zipper and buttons all coming together to make Ruby’s dressing complete.

 

If not a happy ending, a happy beginning then.

 

“You look so beautiful, Rubes,” she compliments as she helps to get Ruby’s veil situated for when they take pictures in a few minutes.

 

“Thank you, Ems. I love you, you know?”

 

She does.

 

“I do. I love you, too.”

 

Emma spends what feels like hours carrying Ruby’s train and smiling for pictures, but it’s worth it. It’s worth it to see Ruby happy, and as Emma watches she and Graham see each other for the first time, she can’t help the smile that breaks out across her face at the pure joy there. It makes her think a bit of she and Killian, but in no way are they the same. They’re not a couple, and they’re not in love, no matter what everyone seems to say. She simply can’t believe the words of others as they seem too good to be true.

 

She’s in love with him, and as much as she knows that he loves her, it’s not quite the same. It’s something she’s lived with for awhile now, and even if she’s one day brave enough to tell him how she really feels, jumping all of the hurdles and risks of losing him should he not feel the same and not want to be friends with her anymore, she’s not even sure how she’d go about that. She’d probably do something stupid like just blurting it out of nowhere.

 

“So tall, dark, and handsome,” Aurora inquires as she slides up to Emma while Ruby and Graham take some pictures, “he’s yours?”

 

Emma feels her stomach drop, a pit forming there while something unpleasant lodges in her throat, and all she wants to do is scream _yes, yes he’s mine_. But he’s not. She was just thinking that because she’s a glutton for punishment, and if someone is interested in Killian, she can’t hold him back from that. That’s selfish, and even if it kills her, she wants him to be happy. He deserves it more than anyone in the world.

 

It’s going to kill her.

 

“He’s a friend,” she says instead, and technically that’s the truth even if it burns her up inside.

 

“But what about that thing Ruby said about him being taken?”

 

She has to grit her teeth to try to keep herself from snapping at Aurora, and she might as well just ball her hand up into a fist to keep her from doing something stupid. “I don’t know what she was talking about.”

 

“Good,” Aurora smiles, and Emma’s unclenched hand instinctively goes to rest at the ring around her neck like it’ll keep her heart from breaking.

 

It doesn’t.

 

The rest of the afternoon is like torture, and she hates herself for it. She hates herself for having to force herself into smiling for the pictures, standing with Ruby and faking smiles and laughter as Ruby is practically shaking with giddy anticipation. Meanwhile, Emma’s being eaten up by the little (or more accurately big) green monster called jealousy.

 

She _hates_ it. She hates being jealous. It’s got to be one of the worst feelings in the world, even when there are much worse things to do or be. And she doesn’t even have anything to be jealous about. Nothing has happened with Killian and Aurora or any other girl that’ll be at this wedding, but all she can think about is his hands running up Aurora’s back or his lips running against her neck. That last thought has her imagining him taking someone back to his hotel room only to realize he can’t do that because they’re sharing a room. That calms her for a moment before she thinks of him thrusting into someone against a closet door or going back to Aurora’s room, and it’s not that hard to imagine. She’s been in a similar situation with him.

 

It eats at her for the rest of the afternoon and early into the evening, but she has to push it aside to be a good maid of honor and more importantly a good friend. This is a day where Ruby deserves all of the happiness in the world. She’s been through the ringer in life, and Ruby deserves better than Emma living in her own personal hell while she’s getting married.

 

So Emma pushes her feelings down, keeping her stomach where it’s supposed to be and her throat clear of this awful feeling she’s had for most of the day. Aren’t weddings supposed to be more fun than this? More alcohol, dancing, and love, and less moping, jealousy, and petty hatred.

 

Screw it. She’s going to smile while she walks down the aisle, and she’s going to mean it.

 

So she does, walking down the aisle in her red gown, forgetting the chill in the air that’s causing gooseflesh to rise on her arms, and grinning as wide as can be as she looks from side to side at all of the people watching her. Her eyes find Killian without even looking for him, and he gives her a real, genuine smile before mouthing _you’re beautiful,_ and she’ll blame her cheeks blushing on the nip of cold air that just blew through.

 

She doesn’t have anything to blame for the rapid beating of her heart, however. That’s just all Killian.

 

The ceremony is beautiful, even if it’s just your standard vows, but it’s something differentto see your best friend get married. She’d felt the same way when David and Mary Margaret got married, and even if her mind had been bit clearer then, she still feels the same amount of joy when the pastor announces them as husband and wife and Ruby cups Graham’s face and kisses the living daylights out of him.

 

She looks to find Killian in the crowd and is glad to see the smile gracing his face for how emotional this weekend has been for him.  

 

The bridal party finished taking all of their pictures before the ceremony, so everyone but Ruby and Graham are immediately removed to the reception, bulb lights glistening under the white tents that have been set up and red and white flowers covering the white table cloths that rest atop the black and white checkered floor. The place is packed, barely a foot of space to maneuver around in as people alternate between the bar, the buffet tables, or the dance floor where a live band is performing.

 

Graham’s parents really know how to throw a party.

 

She’s trying to find Killian, having lost him when everyone rushed here from the ceremony, but all she finds is David and Leo, the both of them in nearly matching suits that may very well be the cutest thing she’s ever seen.

 

“Well, hello my handsome little man,” she tells Leo, kissing his cheek before she swoops in and takes him out of his father’s arms. “Are you having fun?”

 

“I’m having a blast,” David answers, cocky little smirk on his face, “and thank you so much for calling me handsome. Though I don’t know about this little thing.”

 

Emma rolls her eyes, and at the same time she feels a hand wrap around her hip and a solid arm rest on her waist. “I do,” Killian jests, and where in the world did he come from? “It’s a miracle that our favorite toddler friend here even exists.”

 

Emma has to hold back her chuckle at that because she promises she’s more emotionally mature than a sixth-grader laughing at a joke about a small dick, but Killian doesn’t contain his, especially because of the way David’s lips are downturned and his eyes scream murder.

 

_Bloody murder._

 

“You are a word I cannot say right now, Killian Jones.”

 

“I know, Dave.” Killian moves to scratch behind his ear, glancing over at her quickly before looking back to David. “Would you mind taking your handsome mini me back so that I can take our lovely Swan to get a drink?”

 

David simply nods and takes Leo from Emma’s arms, and when Killian offers his hand as the two of them weave through the crowd on their way to the bar, Killian shuffling through people in line like they’re not angering people who are most likely only at this wedding for the free alcohol, she takes it without question.

 

“One glass of whatever rum you’re serving plus a glass of wine,” Killian orders, holding up two fingers with his free hand while his other is still holding Emma’s palm, and she really hopes that her hand doesn’t start sweating or become clammy at the heat of Killian’s skin against hers.

 

Killian releases her hand when they get their drinks, and as much as she misses the contact and the thrill that runs through her, she’s glad to calm her racing heart. It’s getting to be a problem lately, her racing heart when near Killian. A lot of the time it’ll be fine. They can watch television or go to the grocery store together and it’ll all be normal. But other times he’ll just look at her, his blue eyes staring into hers, and something will shift. Something she’s not okay with because it’s every bit as thrilling as it is heartbreaking, and she can’t handle the emotional turmoil of it all.

 

The fact that Killian is in a fitted suit tonight, his lean muscles obvious under the material, and a tiny bit of black chest hair exposed from the way he doesn’t wear a tie or completely button up his shirt, well, that doesn’t help in the slightest.

 

He’s stupid hot, and she can’t think of another way to describe him right now as something she’s trying to ignore coils in her belly.

 

It’s a fun night, and she seems to have forgotten about all of the idiotic, unfounded jealousy she felt earlier by the time she’s on her second drink and her stomach is full of poppy seed chicken that’s some of the best damn wedding food she’s ever had. Killian is teasing her about how Graham’s grandfather very seriously just asked if she’d like to go on a date tomorrow, and how he not-so-helpfully told the man that she was free.

 

“I will stab you with this fork,” she teases, waving around the utensil with a piece of broccoli on it.

 

“Oh come on, you – ”

 

She sees Aurora before Killian feels her tap his shoulder, and when he turns, he’s directly eye level with her cleavage, her bridesmaid’s dress readjusted to give everyone a more obvious look at the tops of her boobs. Emma both hates this girl and respects the hell out of her at this moment.

 

She mostly hates her.

 

“Would you care to dance?” Aurora questions, her eyes quickly darting to Emma’s and slanting just the slightest bit while her lips quirk up on one side. Did this woman just fucking smirk at her?

 

Killian’s a nice guy, and even if Aurora wasn’t offering her boobs on a platter, he’s still going to say yes. She already knows.

 

“I’d be honored to, milady.”

 

Killian glances back at her for a moment, smiling like he doesn’t have a care in the world, and he probably doesn’t. He’s going to dance with a beautiful woman, and the only option she’s gotten all night is an eighty-year-old man. It’s not that she wants men traipsing all over her. She only wants Killian, but he’s off dancing to the band cover a Frank Sinatra song while she’s thinking about legitimately stabbing someone with her fork.

 

She considers throwing in her knife too when Aurora’s hands start roaming Killian’s body, one around his neck while the other moves closer and closer to his ass. She can’t see Aurora from her position at the table, just Killian’s backside, but she sees him dip his head to whisper in her ear and that’s about all that she’s willing to take. It’ll be awhile before Ruby tosses the bouquet or something else Emma needs to be here for, so before she has to watch more of this she’s heading outside of the tent, grabbing a tall glass of wine off the end of the bar on her way out.

 

She downs the entire thing before she even decides where she’s going in order to get some air, and it’s only after the last drop is consumed that she remembers the lake Killian talked about earlier. Here she is trying to forget about Killian, and all she can do is think about him.

 

Isn’t that how it always works?

 

She finds the water after a few minutes of wandering, and how the hell is this place so big?

 

Killian was right, this place is beautiful. She bets it’s even better when the sun is in the sky, the light from it reflecting off the water so much more than the dim reflections of the moon and the stars. All she has to go on is the picture Killian sent her earlier, but she imagines it’s so much better in person. The sounds of the wedding are in the distance, muted music that she can feel more than she can hear. It’s soothing being out here all alone when she knows that there’s so much life happening a few hundred feet away.

 

Emma’s not sure how long she stays out there, but she can feel herself shivering and her breath is white every time she exhales and she knows she needs to go back inside before the freezes. She just can’t bring herself to go back quite yet, despite the chill.

 

Her phone buzzes a few times in the pocket of her dress (which, holy shit Ruby thank you for that), but she doesn’t check it. There’s something calming about staring out at the water. Maybe it’s how it rocks gently back and forth, still if you don’t pay too much attention to it, but her eyes are glued to it as she tries to drown out all of her thoughts.

 

She can’t though. All she can think about is Killian, and it’s not necessarily about the fact that he’s back at the wedding with another woman, but it’s the fact that she’s out here looking up at the sky and the water without him. It doesn’t matter where she is now. When she sees the water, she thinks of Killian. She thinks of his love for it, even if he’s hesitant to go near it now because of Liam’s death. But he was made to be near the water, just as he was made to be somewhere outside of a city so that he can look up and see the stars.

 

Emma can almost imagine that she’s back at his apartment with him resting in the hammock of his balcony, his arms wrapped around her as his heat encompasses her and he takes her hand and points out the constellations. They’re not back there, though, so she’s left to try to find the constellations on her own, wishing and hoping for something unknown even to her as she holds to the chain at her neck, lifting it before letting it fall back against her heart.

 

* * *

 

He’d ended up finding David and Leo after Emma had left him to finish getting ready, and as much as he was thrown off by Emma’s quiet demeanor toward the end of lunch, he tried not to think about it too much. It’s already been a pretty emotional weekend, and he doesn’t really want that anymore. He just wants to go to a wedding and pretend everything is perfectly okay, that there are no underlying emotions about his brother…or Emma.

 

Gods, she’s beautiful. Just stunning really, and as much as he likes when she’s bare of makeup with her hair matted to her face after they have a late night and she falls asleep as soon as her face hits the mattress, the way her makeup had highlighted her eyes made his heartbeat quick and his spine tingle like he was a teenager again. She makes him feel ridiculous, like that very teenager sometimes, and he doesn’t know how much longer he can take being around her without actually being with her.

 

At least she’s not dating anyone right now. It’s been awhile, maybe a year since she broke up with Walsh, and how selfish is he that he was relieved when it ended between the two of them? If she had been heartbroken, sobbing in a ball and feeling like life wouldn’t go on, maybe he wouldn’t have been so relieved. Maybe he would have pushed his own feelings aside and simply been there for her without the guilt in his mind that he was glad that she was unattached. But she hadn’t been sad, or at least she hadn’t been on the surface. She had been pissed beyond belief because Walsh had been spreading false rumors about her at work. She really knew how to pick the assholes, didn’t she?

 

Not that he was any better.

 

Because he was an asshole for being glad that she was unattached because it made his heart ache a little less and allowed them to have more time together. They’ve been close for years, but this past year they’ve been inseparable. It’s like the only place he goes without Emma is work and even then they often meet for lunch. It’s ridiculous, really. He shouldn’t be so dependent and tied up in her when she’ll never be his, and sometimes he tries to resist and move back. But that lasts for about an hour before Emma sends him a meme or God forbid, smiles at him.

 

He’s a goner.

 

And there’s no coming back.

 

“Earth to Killian,” David pokes at his arm above the table, shaking Killian a bit out of his daydreaming. “You got a little starry eyed for a minute there, bud.”

 

“Twas simply thinking about you, dear old Dave.”

 

“No offense, but I hope you never look like that when you’re thinking of me.”

 

Killian rolls his eyes in annoyance before blowing David a kiss, using his hand to make it more obnoxious as Leo blows kisses back at Killian…unlike his father.

 

“So no babysitter for the little lad today?”

 

“He’s the ring bearer, so he’s got to be here all day. Mary Margaret and I will probably head out of the reception early to get him to bed.”

 

“Married life sounds like a blast.”

 

“It is. You should try it sometime, preferably with – ”

 

“Don’t make me get irritated in front of the boy.”

 

David shrugs. “I’m just saying. Settling down isn’t all that bad.”

 

“It’s not for everybody.”

 

He and Dave sit in one of the lounges watching television and playing with Leo as he babbles about with the bag of toys the Nolans packed for him, but eventually the three of them do have to get ready, Killian dressing as David took Leo to go take pictures with everyone.

 

The rest of the day passes quickly, and he manages to feel nothing but joy for Ruby, letting his previous feelings subside as she walks down the aisle with this smile on her face that he can’t help but return even if she’s not looking at him. It’s intoxicating seeing such happiness on her after going through some of his lowest points with her, and he swears that he claps louder than anyone when she’s officially married, even letting out a wolf whistle just for her.

 

This place is packed, people milling around with barely an inch of skin between them, and as he moves through the crowd, he feels his arm being tugged, his entire body turning to see the photographer grabbing onto him and saying that the bride has requested his presence. How could he ever refuse her?

 

He’s led out to one of the gardens where Ruby and Graham are laughing about something he’s not privy to, but when Ruby catches sight of him she scurries toward him as quickly as she can in her dress. Her arms around his neck before he knows it, the force of her embrace knocking him backwards until his arms wrap around her waist and he rests his chin against the top of her hair, pressing a kiss there when he pulls back the slightest bit.

 

“Congratulations, sweetheart,” he whispers into her ear as their embrace continues. “You look so beautiful.”

 

“Thank you, Killian.” She pulls back and places her hands on his shoulders before she studies his face, her gaze intense like she’s looking for something specific. “You look handsome.”

 

“Dashingly so, yes.”

 

She slaps his shoulder as she laughs, and he can’t help but chuckle, too. He and Ruby don’t get together very often without Emma, but they talk constantly. He didn’t know her well when she was with Liam, but he knows her now. As selfish as he’s been with his feelings this weekend, he knows that Ruby doesn’t begrudge him for it. On top of everything, though, now that he’s out of his own head, he’s happy for his friend.

 

It’s what he wants, and it’s definitely what Liam would want.

 

“Not that I don’t want to be here as you and your new husband take more pictures, love, but is there a reason you called me over here?”

 

“Yeah, I wanted a picture with you, ya doof.”

 

“Why?”

 

She shrugs. “You’re family, and I love you.”

 

Well, that’s just not fair when he thought he finally had a good hold on his emotions.

 

“I love you, too, lass.”

 

He leaves the two of them to finish their pictures after he takes a few and to allow them to spend time together since they’ll be bombarded with people all night, and when he gets back to the tents where the reception is being held, it takes him a bit to find Emma, finally spotting her holding onto Leo and chatting with David. He slips his arm around her waist like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and maybe it is with the way she leans a bit into his touch, her skin warm through her dress.

 

Feeling his skin through her dress has him really, desperately needing a drink, and it’s not his smartest move when he grabs onto her palm and guides her through the party-goers until they reach the bar, ordering a glass of wine for Emma and some rum for him. Everything feels much lighter after that. It could be the alcohol, but it’s more likely the way that Emma seems to be absolutely beaming with happiness compared to how sullen she was earlier, laughing at his stupid jokes and smiling throughout their conversations while eating dinner.

 

She’s just _hopefully_ playfully threatened to stab him with her fork when he feels a tap on his shoulder, turning to the side only to come to face to face…actually, face to boob. He’s face to boob because one of the bridesmaids is standing in front of him with her dress pulled sinfully low in a way that makes him uncomfortable because it’s not…it’s not Emma.

 

“Would you care to dance?”

 

He wouldn’t, but his mother raised him to be a gentleman, and even if he doesn’t always fit the bill, he can try.

 

“I’d be honored to, milady.”

 

The woman leads him to the dance floor, and he should truly learn her name sometime in the next few minutes. He doesn’t want to leave Emma behind, and he was honestly only planning on dancing with her tonight. It seems the universe has other plans for tonight.

 

Her name is apparently Aurora, and while she’s a beautiful lass who he definitely would have gone home with in the past, he has no interest in going home with her tonight. That’s obviously her intention from the way her hands have started to roam his body, and he honestly just feels fucking uncomfortable at this moment.

 

This is the longest Frank Sinatra song of all time.

 

When it’s nearing the end of the song, Aurora’s lips brush against the lobe of his ear before she whispers, “there’s plenty of empty sitting rooms inside the house if you’d like to join me.”

 

A shiver runs down his spine and not in the pleasurable way, and he chuckles while trying to brush off her advances, pulling back from her embrace as the song ends and scratching behind his ear now that his hands are no longer on her waist.

 

“That’s a kind offer, lass, but I think I’ll have to decline.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I’m not particularly interested in a romp in the sheets with a stranger to be honest.”

 

“We’re not strangers. We’ve danced together.”

 

This is damn well awkward now, and he has to slowly start inching himself away from Aurora because he doesn’t know exactly how to get out of this without seeming like an asshole, not that he really cares about that because Aurora is being a bit of an asshole in not letting him go when he’s trying to back his way out of her hold.

 

Ruby, bless her soul, somehow finds him and pulls him into a dance herself as Aurora storms off to what he assumes is the bar. That’s probably where he’d go. This song is much faster than the last, allowing him to spin Ruby around in circles, her gown flaring out at the bottom as she laughs when he pulls her back into his arms.

 

She’s happy, and so is he.

 

When sweat starts to bead at his forehead, he excuses himself to go back to the table to grab a sip of water before forcing Emma to come out to dance herself. She’s not much for dancing, but he’d like to dance with her. Plus, he knows that deep down she enjoys it. She’s just always needed to find a partner who knows what he’s doing, and he likes to think that he’s got smooth moves.

 

Probably not if he’s telling himself that he has smooth moves.

 

Emma’s not at the table when he gets there, but he doesn’t think much of it, assuming she went to the restroom or the bar to get herself another drink. But after a few minutes when she doesn’t return, he begins to worry the slightest bit. His first thought is that she’s gone off with someone, but who the hell would she go off with? She hasn’t had a one-night stand in…awhile. He doesn’t remember when, unless she just hasn’t told him. But Emma tells him nearly everything.

 

So he shucks that idea for his own sanity, pulling his phone out of his jacket pocket and sending her a text.

 

_9:03: Hey, where’d you go? You hiding from the dance floor?_

_9:13: I assume you’ve just gotten caught up talking to someone, but I think your suitor from earlier might come onto me soon if you don’t return soon._

_9:17: Swan, you’re missing Granny twerking. I’m going to send a video because this should be immortalized._

_9:17: Or maybe not. I might be a little scarred._

 

By the time thirty minutes have passed and she’s nowhere to be seen, he really does start to worry, rising from his seat and wandering around, asking anybody and everybody if they’ve seen her. He gets a few crude responses, but besides those, it’s mostly people saying that they don’t know her or don’t know where she’s gone. Logically, he knows that nothing could have happened to her. They’re at a private wedding, and as big as the grounds are, she can’t have wandered far.

 

He’s seemingly searched every square foot of the place, and when he pulls his phone out to check to see if she’s texted him back, he sees the picture of the water he sent her this afternoon. It’s a little off the beaten path of the rest of the estate, but it’s the only place he hasn’t checked, assuming she hasn’t gone back to the reception while he’s been searching for her. He probably should have asked someone to let him know if she came back, but he was a little preoccupied with his thoughts at the time.

 

Killian practically sprints there, the chill of the air making him shiver away from the heated tent, and when he sees a small figure in a strapless red dress standing in front of the water with her arms wrapped around her body and her breath white in front of her, he knows that something must be wrong if she’s standing out here freezing herself to death.

 

His suit jacket is off him, the cold air already prickling at his skin, before he’s even close enough to confirm that it’s her and when he reaches her and officially knows that it’s Emma, he drapes it over her shoulders, shocking her so that she turns to him with wide, watery eyes and a gaping mouth.

 

“Bloody hell, Emma. Are you trying to freeze to death?”

 

“I’m not cold.”

 

He reaches out to touch her cheek, and it’s like he’s touching ice when his skin makes contact with hers. He sees her eyes flutter shut at the contact, her long, black eyelashes reaching down to her cheeks, and her entire body practically shivers.

 

“You’re freezing, love.” He moves to tuck a stray piece of hair behind her ear, and she finally opens her eyes when his hand caresses her neck and moves down to rest at her shoulder, his fingers playing with the chain around her neck. “What’s wrong, darling? Why are you out here?”

 

“I love you.”


	5. Chapter Five

Emma says the words before she can stop herself, and she immediately feels Killian’s hand tense on her shoulder, his fingers quickly tightening before loosening their hold on her chain as his lips part, white air appearing in the air as he exhales.

 

At least he’s still breathing.

 

She’s not sure if she is.

 

She really needs him to say something back.

 

“I – uh…I…Come again?”

 

Okay, so those are not the words she wanted him to speak, and a stab of pain starts in her stomach and moves throughout the entirety of her body, all the way to her toes and to the hairs at her neck. She could fall to the ground at the weight she suddenly feels, but she’s not going to do that. She won’t let herself do that. Instead she pulls away so that Killian’s hand falls from her shoulder and hits against his side with a soft thud.

 

She’s backing away slowly, needing space to breathe where her breath won’t intermingle with Killian’s, white swirls twirling together in the air, but the bastard just steps forward after her, the smallest of twitches at the corners of his lips as his left eyebrow raises and his damn eyes are still blue in the dark of the night.

 

She can’t believe she just told him that she loves him, and she can’t believe that his response was to just bumble through words like he’s normally not the most eloquent man alive who can recite Shakespeare when drunk and then smirk at her without saying anything else.

 

Actually, she can believe that. She’d do the same if he told her that he loves her. She’d probably forget the English language. She really wants him to not have forgotten how to speak and to tell her he loves her, too. She’d relearn the English language just to hear those three little (big) words.

 

“Just, forget about that. I, uh, I didn’t say that. Just a gust of the wind or some crap.”

 

He takes a step closer. She takes a step further away.

 

“A gust of the wind, yeah?”

 

He takes a step closer. She takes a step further away.

 

“Yes.”

 

He takes a step closer. She stands still.

 

“And it wasn’t you saying that you love me?”

 

He takes a step closer. She stands still.

 

“Because I,” he steps close enough that she can practically feel his body heat all over her, consuming her and protecting her and making her feel like she’s burning, “love you so bloody much, Emma Swan.”

 

She takes a step closer…

 

…and then there’s no space between them, her arms wrapping around his neck as her hands cup the back of his head while his hands set fire to her face as he frames the skin there and kisses the holy hell out of her. Her legs practically fall out from underneath her at the feeling of his lips against hers, and when he runs his hands through her hair, a whimper comes from the back of her throat that has Killian stopping his assault of her lips to laugh at her, resting his forehead against hers as the two of them try to catch their breaths.

 

It’s been eight years since she last kissed him, and she doesn’t want to go eight more seconds without kissing him.

 

“That felt pretty familiar didn’t it?” he laughs against her mouth before lightly brushing his lips against hers, the faintest of touches that she could almost convince herself wasn’t there. But it was.

 

“Yeah, I think we may have done that before.”

 

“I like to think I’ve gained some skills since then. I was so young, so inexperienced.”

 

He’s teasing her, and she laughs again, her mind dizzy at all of the changes, releasing her hands from his neck and moving to wrap her arms around his waist instead, feeling the heat of his body to try to warm her while he does the same with her, his hands resting underneath his jacket at her back.

 

“You were past your mid-twenties, Killian. You sound as if we were bumbling fifteen-year-olds.”

 

“Possibly. That was still better than I remember. And I’ve thought about it a lot.”

 

She lifts her head to look up at him, and he really is so beautiful, his eyes somehow lighting up even more in the darkness of the night. She thinks this must be a dream. There’s no way this could have all just happened.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“You have no idea. You’ve got this freckle that I’d really enjoy visiting again.”

 

She slaps his shoulder before pressing up on her toes and kissing at his jaw. “So you really love me?”

 

“Aye.”

 

If this had happened somewhere besides the middle of an estate while at her best friend’s wedding, she imagines that she’d be riding Killian into oblivion right now instead of wrapping her arm around his waist and guiding him back to the tents where the crowd has started to filter out, mostly just those under the age of forty with no kids left hanging between the dance floor and the bar as Ruby and Graham are animatedly talking and dancing with everyone who’s still there.

 

Ruby spots her walk back in and drags her with her until they’re swaying next to the band, Ruby moving Emma all over the place in a way that shouldn’t even be possible until she pulls her in and begins whispering in her ear.

 

“Did you and baby Jones go fuck? I thought you said it was too weird to do it at both a funeral and a wedding?”

 

She should have known that Ruby would notice their absence, and she laughs against Ruby’s shoulder before pulling back and placing her hands on Ruby’s shoulders.

 

“We didn’t sleep together. I promise.”

 

“Hmm,” Ruby fingers at Killian’s suit jacket on her shoulders.“You didn’t sleep together and yet you’re wearing his clothes. You curious creature, Emma Swan.”

 

“Shouldn’t you be holed up somewhere with your new husband?”

 

Ruby rolls her eyes and sticks her tongue out at Emma like the mature married woman that she is.

 

“I was waiting for you so I could throw the bouquet. I’ve had your wedding planned for years. I don’t want to be old and gray when it happens. Gotta speed things along.”

 

“Do _not_ throw that bouquet at me.”

 

Ruby throws the bouquet directly at her, but Aurora literally dives in front of her and grabs the flowers before holding them in the air and cheering. Ruby just rolls her eyes and winks at Emma before starting her rounds of goodbyes, making sure to squeeze Emma so much that she can’t breathe before Ruby’s kissing her cheek and doing the same to Killian.

 

“You ready to go, love?”

 

“You have no idea.”

 

It’s a long drive back to the hotel, and she dozes off several times, jerking back awake when Killian mumbles something under his breath about _sodding New York drivers and their fucking brakes,_ and she tries to stay awake to keep him from trying to run over all of the other late-night drivers. His hand finds its way to her thigh, fingers resting there and drawing patterns into her skin that have her squirming in her seat. When he inches dangerously close to the apex of her thighs, she thinks maybe it’s an accident, but then she looks over at him and he’s fucking smirking and waggling his eyebrows, his eyes never leaving the road.

 

“You know, two can play at the game, Killian Jones.”

 

“I suggest two don’t unless you want me swerving into oncoming traffic.”

 

So she leaves him be even though heat and pressure are building in her belly as disbelief stays in her head. This is all so weird. It’s right, but it’s weird. She and Killian said they love each other and then made out in thirty-degree weather. And now they’re most definitely on their way back to their hotel to _sleep together_ , and how is she supposed to feel about this? Because she feels happy and also incredibly turned on. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be.

 

“Is this whole thing weird to you?”

 

“What thing?”

 

“You know what thing.”

 

He pats her leg. “I know, darling. But I don’t think it’s weird. I think it’s…different. Good but different. I think this drive is just giving you time to overthink it, but don’t, okay?”

 

“I’m not. You’re just really turning me on with your wandering right hand.”

 

He laughs before quickly glancing over her and grabbing her hand, bringing her knuckles to his lips and kissing her skin, making her body tingle and her heart flutter because she feels like her life is on track. Like she’s happy with every bit of it.

 

“Be patient.”

 

Killian’s a hypocrite because as soon as he swipes their room key through the slot, he’s dragging her into the room and pushing her up against the door, her hands braced against the wood to keep her chest from slamming into the hard planes as Killian covers her body with his own, pressing his chest into her back as his tongue traces around her ear while his hands knead her hips.

 

“What happened to being patient?”

 

“I have been.” He bites at her lobe, and she’s going to die from the way the sensation travels through her. “For eight years.”

 

His lips begin to move then, running from her ear to her jaw as his hips begin to roll into her ass, and _oh god_ this is really happening, isn’t it? This is happening, and she can’t fucking wait.

 

He’s setting her on fire with the way he’s kissing all over her body, his tongue tracing her skin with his lips and his teeth following behind and moving everywhere but her lips. Maybe he wasn’t kidding when he said he’d learned a few things, and that’s why this is so good when all he’s done is nibble at her neck, but maybe it’s because they love each other this time instead of being practical strangers.

 

Yeah, that one is it.

 

“Where’s the damn zipper in this dress?” He practically growls as his hands fumble around her body looking for the zipper until she guides him to the small slit under her arm. “Why put that in such a bloody difficult place to find?”

 

“Believe it or not, I don’t think they make these dresses for the sole purpose of horny adult men taking them off.”

 

“That’s idiotic.”

 

She moves her hand over his and presses it into the zipper because this is taking entirely too long, and she knows that when he gets it down past her waist, he’s going to be in for quite the surprise.

 

His breath hitches, and she knows that he’s seen that she’s bare.

 

“No bra, Swan?”

 

“It didn’t work with the dress.”

 

“It works for me.”

 

He’s so incredibly stupid, and she would laugh, but he tugs the zipper until the fabric falls from her breasts and she’s exposed to the cold of the room and the heat of Killian’s gaze as he turns her to rest her back against the door, his calloused fingers causing her head to shake in a shiver. He kisses her again then, pressing his mouth against hers so that his scruff burns into her chin and her jaw while the material of his dress shirt rubs against her breasts, causing her nipples to pebble as he moves against her.

 

“You’re so bloody beautiful,” he groans against her neck as his hands travel to her breasts, kneading at them with his palms while his fingers run in circles over her nipples and finish driving them to peaks, and yep, he’s definitely going to kill her tonight. They’ve basically gotten to second base, and she feels like she’s played the whole goddamn ball game. “And I’ve missed these.”

 

“My boobs?”

 

“Bloody glorious are they, love.”

 

This slow burn thing has been going slow enough, and she needs more. Soon clothes are flying from bodies to the floor and bodies are flying onto a mattress and to each other and Killian kisses down her body and makes her writhe beneath his touch. Right now he’s working at her inner thigh, his facial hair scratching her and making the wetness that she knows is soaking her grow even more. He’s so damn close to where she wants him, and he knows it, going so far as to breathe over her folds before moving away and kissing her thigh again.

 

“Killian, please for the love of everything good in the world, stop teasing me.”

 

“I’m not teasing you.” He bites at her thigh, and the pleasure and pain shoot straight to her core. “I’m appreciating you.”

 

She rolls her eyes before reaching down to grab at his hair, causing him to make this sound, something between a growl and a moan, before she guides him to her center, and when his lips touch hers, she’s the one moaning.

 

He didn’t do this the first time around. They’d basically just fucked that night, getting down to the nitty gritty after enough foreplay, and _oh my god_ was she missing out. He’s barely even begun touching her, running his tongue between her folds, completely avoiding her clit as he does little thrusts inside of her with his glorious tongue. She tries to thrust her hips up into his face for a little more friction, but his hands are placed on her hips to hold her down while he hums into her core, building that pressure higher and higher until he does finally move to her bundle of nerves, teasing and taunting and sucking until he can’t hold her hips down when she bucks up into his face and into her release, the bliss hitting her while she closes her eyes and pulls at the sheets from where she was fisting them.

 

“That enough not teasing for you?”

 

“I don’t think I’ve ever known someone who can talk so much during sex. Of course, this is you after all. You never shut up.”

 

He laughs before crawling up her body and kissing her, and she can taste herself on his tongue. That’s a lot hotter than she expected it to be, and she really can’t handle the way his body heat is making the beads of sweat at the top of her forehead increase or the way his erection is pressing into her thigh like it’s the most normal thing in the world for her best friend to be getting ready to fuck her.

 

“Oh shit,” she gasps, pushing up at his chest so that he can move back, his eyebrow quirking as he looks down at her like what the hell could she possibly be complaining about at this moment?

 

“What?”

 

“Do you have a condom?”

 

His mouth falls into an “o” before he’s crawling off of her, his entire body on display as he searches through his bag and inspects a box, his feet constantly moving like he can’t stand to stay still. The lines of his body are more defined than they were eight years ago, and while she’s seen him shirtless and watched him hastily change clothes before they go out, it’s a little different to see the lean lines of his body and the way his hips slim and cinch in a v.

 

He sits back on the bed, holding a little foil package and grinning in such a way that the lines around his eyes crinkle and his teeth practically reach his ears. “I present to you your shield for my sword.”

 

The laughter bubbles up inside of her, coming into her mouth, and as much as she doesn’t want to laugh at that, she has to, the giggles coming out even as she covers her mouth and hunches her body forward. Killian joins in, and as excited as she is to be feeling _his sword_ in a minute, she’s even more so excited that they’re still them. This doesn’t seem to be changing things.

 

She climbs from her position on the bed and back onto the floor so that she can stand between Killian’s legs, spreading them as she takes the condom out of his hand and tears it open before slowly sliding it down his length, never losing eye contact until she’s finished. She’s just about to climb onto him when she remembers wanting to run her tongue along the curve of his tattoo, and so she does, her tongue tracing the blue and black ink as Killian curses under his breath.

 

Things move a little more quickly from there. Emma straddles his lap, and as they join together, the both of them groan at the sensation. It feels good, and it feels right, the entire world fading away as she starts to move above him, his length dragging inside of her in the most delicious way. Killian watches her bounce above him for awhile, holding onto her hip like she’s the most delicate thing in the world, but when her breathing gets a little heavier and her thighs begin to burn, he grabs onto the chain around her neck – Liam’s chain – and pulls her to him so that it and the ring rest between their chests while he kisses her.

 

She can feel every bit of Killian like this, the muscles and hair and lips, and it doesn’t take long until she falls for the second time by his touch, her body slightly shivering but not fading too much so that she’s able to move with Killian until he falls, too.

 

Emma needs to buy Ruby a fruit basket or something. Hell, she needs to buy her a basket of diamonds for helping to be one of the reasons she and Killian met.

 

This has been…everything.

 

Later, he’s got his head on her lap while she runs her hands through the drying sweaty hair at his forehead, pushing it up and out of his eyes so that she can see the lines of his forehead as he drifts between drowsiness and alertness in his sated state. A thought makes its way through her mind, and she can’t stop herself from asking it.

 

“Why do you think it took us so long to get here?”

 

“We’re stubborn assholes.”

 

“Do you really think that’s why?”

 

Killian turns his head to the side and kisses at her bare stomach, tracing the lines of it with his tongue like if he stops she’ll disappear from out from under him. She’s not going anywhere. She’s not. There’s nowhere else she’d rather be, but Killian is desperately kissing at her skin and moving his entire body up until his lips capture hers in the most demanding kiss she’s ever experienced in her twenty nine years of living. It’s so passionate and sweeping that the words she had in her head dissolve into nothingness and all she can think about is how Killian’s tongue sliding against hers is sending shivers throughout her entire body.

 

Again.

 

She has to push him back because she has to breathe, and when her eyes open to look at him, his baby blues are glazed over in a way that she’s just not comfortable with. “Hey, hey, hey, Killian,” she soothes when the water escapes and starts trailing down his cheek. She wipes at them before carding her hands through his hair and trying to comfort him even if she has no idea what’s happening. “What’s wrong? I’m here. I’m not going anyone. Whatever is wrong is going to be okay.”

 

“I just,” he chokes out, flipping off of her and onto his back so that he can slam his fist into the mattress and keep his eyes shut so tightly that she sees the lines around his eyes increase, “I just can’t believe the damn bastard had to die for this.” Killian starts laughing like some possessed spirit has taken over him, and Emma’s beginning to get a little worried that she’s somehow driven him to madness. “I met the bloody love of my life because the only other one died, and it just kind of seems like some kind of twisted fate, doesn’t it?”

 

She’s not sure if she should touch him at a moment like this, these charted and yet somehow very uncharted oceans of their relationship confusing to her. Yeah, she’s comforted him before, comforted him while they were naked that one time, too. But this is different. It’s not just that their bodies lack barriers, but their hearts do as well, the walls down so that the each of them can attempt passage. So she reaches her hand down the bed and nudges his fingers, opening up her palm and giving him the option to twine his fingers with hers. He does, and she immediately squeezes his digits as her body sags in relief.

 

“You know, I think we would have met anyway. I thought about that already this weekend, how there’s no way we wouldn’t have. I think we’d be here, too. Maybe sooner. Maybe later. I don’t know, Killian. All I know is that this love you have for Liam, don’t ever let it stop, okay?”

 

She squeezes his hand until he mumbles an okay under his breath.

 

“The only thing he ever wanted was for you to be happy, and even if it took several situations happening because Liam’s not physically here with us to have us be together, I think that, if I may be so bold, he’d say it was worth it if I make you happy.”

 

Her eyes are closed as she talks, so she feels more than sees Killian turn on his side, the mattress moving with her as his free hand caresses her face.

 

“You make me happier than I ever could have imagined. You have no bloody idea. Don’t think that just because I’m an emotional fool that it doesn’t mean this hasn’t been one of the best nights of my life, okay?”

 

“Well, I’ve got an ache between my thighs that pretty much confirms that.”

 

He scoffs a bit with his laugh before turning more fully to his side and pressing a kiss into her shoulder. “Not just the sex Emma. You. Loving you for an incredibly long time and knowing that somewhere along the way you started loving me, too.”

 

“A long time?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Pinky promise?”

 

He laughs before hooking her finger with his, and as stupid as this little tradition is, she loves that.

 

“Pinky promise…and the sex was pretty good, too.”

 

* * *

 

They’ve been together for nearly two weeks when he knows for sure that he wants to marry Emma. He’s not insane, though, so he doesn’t plan on proposing anytime soon. He knows more than most people that life can end on short-notice, one day you’re here and then you’re not. But for the first time in a long time he’s trying not to constantly be living with one foot dragging in the past while his body pushes against the door to move forward. He wants to live more presently, his past guiding him but not controlling him.

 

It’s a clear winter night, one where he can see the stars from his balcony, and while he’s waiting on Emma to show up at his apartment with food after work, he decides to crawl into his hammock and enjoy the night air, his mind running through the constellations even as his eyes are closed, the blue fading into black as he rests his hands over his stomach.

 

He knows Emma’s arrived by the sounds coming from the apartment, the door slamming and her keys loudly dropping onto the side table by his front door before her heels are undoubtedly kicked off and not put on the little shelf he has for her. He doesn’t even know why he bothered with it. There’s always hope, though. She’s quiet for a few minutes before the sliding glass door opens and then shuts, and then she climbs into the hammock with him, her small body pressing on top of his with the heavy blanket she’s brought with her before she presses a kiss on his lips so that he finally opens his eyes.

 

“Hello, beautiful. How was the rest of your day?”

 

“Tiring.”

 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

 

“No,” she sighs, adjusting herself so that the entire hammock swings with her movements, swaying back and forth, making him feel a bit like he’s out on the ocean. He doesn’t mind. “It was just long. Not super emotionally draining or something.”

 

They stay that way for awhile, the food inside probably reaching the same cold temperatures as the air out here. He wraps his arm around her stomach and feels the ring rest against her chest over the softness of her sweater.

 

“Can I tell you something, love?”

 

“As long as you’re not saying you’re leaving me for another woman, I’m all ears.”

 

He rolls his eyes before he lifts the ring off her chest, dropping it back down to hit against her stomach. “So you know this ring?”

 

“Obviously, yes.”

 

“And you know whose it is?”

 

“Liam’s.”

 

“Well, technically it’s my mother's, which Liam inherited when she died. So it’s both.”

 

“And Liam gave it to you when he died, right?”

 

He smiles before pressing a kiss to her hair.

 

“Actually, for my eighteenth birthday.”

 

She turns in his arms so that she’s resting against his stomach, her arms crossed against his chest as she looks up at him, nodding at him to continue.

 

“So he comes barging into my room before the sun rises because even though he was supposed to have leave for my birthday, he ended up having to go back. So he comes barging in, and believe it or not, I was not an early riser before the Navy.”

 

“I don’t believe it.”

 

He taps her nose, and she scrunches up her face. He loves her.

 

“Anyways, I’m pissed because he’s woken me up. He places this chain in my lap, and when I look down at it, I see our mother’s wedding band. And obviously I’m confused because what the hell is an eighteen-year-old lad going to do with his mother’s wedding band? But Liam gives this speech, calls me the big love of his life like the most mature twenty-two year old on the planet, and then tells me…he tells me that I’m forever for him, and that if one day I find another forever, someone who I love with everything I have, possibly someone I love more than my life itself, then I give her this ring.”

  
Tears fall to her cheeks and he wipes them away with the pads of his thumbs while he’s smiling down at her. “And he probably meant when I got married, but obviously I had a bit of a different idea.”

 

Her eyes squint in confusion and her lips purse in the way that they do when she’s thinking about something, thoughts bouncing around in the walls of her mind until she speaks.

 

“But you gave this to me years ago?”

 

“Aye.”

 

“So you were so sure of me then?”

 

“Even if you never loved me back, you’d still be the big love of my life, my darling.”

 

She scurries up his body as best she can to kiss him, her lips landing more on his chin than anything else, but he doesn’t really care. “I love you, Killian.”

 

One morning while she’s sleeping, he slides the chain off of her neck before detaching it from the ring. He thinks maybe he should pocket it and ask her to marry him later, but something compels him to slide it onto her ring finger that rests on his chest before picking up her hand and kissing the metal.

 

She hasn’t noticed it for three days. She hasn’t noticed, or she’s too nervous to say anything. But he’d bet that she hasn’t noticed. In the year that he’s been dating Emma Swan, there’s not much that she keeps to herself, and he can’t imagine she’d walk around with the ring that normally resides around her neck on her left hand’s ring finger for days without saying something or acting the slightest bit strange. She’s not acting strange, though, completely going on as if things are normal, and he wonders how long he can wait this out before she says something…or more likely, before he says something.

 

More days pass and then suddenly a week passes, and he should have gone with some kind of normal plan for asking this bloody woman to marry him, because every day she simply kisses him goodbye as they split paths on the way to work, murmuring I love you against his lips, but never saying anything about the fact that the chain that she wore for four years isn’t around her neck.

 

He’s going to go crazy, and one night when his mind has been running all over the place and Emma’s asleep next to him, soft puffs of air passing through her lips while she slumbers, he takes her hand and begins to slide the ring off of her hand only to have her yank her hand away and her eyes to stare up at him.

 

“W-what do you think you’re doing, babe?”

 

“I, uh, I…” She’s staring at him expectantly, and dammit. This was a stupid plan, and he can’t take it anymore. “I was trying to get the ring off of your finger.”

 

“Why would you want to do that?”

 

“Because it’s been three weeks since I put it on there, and you haven’t mentioned it once.”

 

“Killian Jones,” she sighs, flipping over and maneuvering around their bed to straddle his thighs and rest on his stomach as she looks down at him, “you are the most romantic man in the world. I know all of your moves, and you think that I didn’t notice that you slid this onto a very particular finger while I was sleeping?”

 

Oh well, shit. She has noticed. All he’s wanted was for her to notice, and now that he knows that she has, he’s not sure that’s what he wants. Did his heart stop? He thinks his heart may have stopped.

 

“You didn’t say anything.”

 

Her entire face recoils, brows knitted together and lips downturned, and what the bloody hell is happening?

 

“Yes, I did.”

 

“No, you didn’t.”

 

She readjusts on his lap, and that was really a bad place for her to decide to perch herself for this conversation.

 

“Uh, yeah, I did. I woke up, and I immediately knew that the chain was gone, and then when I was brushing my teeth I noticed the shine of the ring in the mirror. I literally came back into the bedroom, straddled you just like I’m doing now, said yes, and then kissed the living daylights out of you. And now, I know that I said yes _several_ other times right after that moment, but I feel like I was much more obvious than you in my intentions.”

 

A smile blooms on his face for the first time during this entire conversation, and while he remembers her coming in and kissing the, as she said, living daylights out of him, and then the resulting love making session, he doesn’t remember her saying the initial yes. He’s an idiot. He really is, but apparently the love of his life has agreed to marry him. He’s not about the blow this.

 

“So you said yes?”

 

“I did.”

 

“You’ll marry me? Truly?”

 

“Every damn day if I could despite the fact that that’s the first time you’re actually asking me.”

 

He grabs her hips and moves her off him, Emma squealing at the way she flops back against the bed, her hair splaying out behind her head like some kind of tangled halo, while he crawls over her, perching himself on his forearms and his knees so that he’s hovering just over her, the tip of his nose brushing with hers.

 

“What are you doing, babe? Because I – ”

 

“Shhh. Shush, Emma. Let me do this right.”

 

“You’re supposed to be on one knee.”

 

He quirks his eyebrow up at her while lifting his left knee off of the bed so that he’s, indeed, on one knee. Except, it’s an awkward angle and Emma’s hysterical laughter doesn’t help, especially when he joins in and ends up tumbling down on top of her so that his entire body weight is crushing her. When he tries to move off of her, she stops him, grabbing at his face and keeping him directly above her.

 

“Killian, just ask me. For real, say all of the words you want to say, and you know what my answer is going to be.”

 

“Emma,” he sighs against her lips, her emerald eyes still shining in happiness even in the darkness of the room. He’s not nervous, his heart most definitely beating at a normal rhythm now, and he’s ready for this. They’re ready. It’s been long enough. “My wonderful, brilliant love, would you do me the honor of marrying me?”

 

She nods her head against the mattress, her nose brushing against him before she says, “yes,” and pulls his lips down into hers, and he can feel the smile in her kiss.

 

When he finally does roll of her, she rolls off of the bed and starts getting dressed in one of his sweatshirts and a pair of pajama pants, and while he thinks she’s just going to crawl back into bed with him, she doesn’t, instead walking toward the bedroom door.

 

“Where are you going, love?”

 

“Follow me.”

 

He’ll never be done chasing this woman.

 

When he sees that she’s going out onto the balcony, he has no idea what she’s doing, but it’s freezing outside, so he grabs the heavy knit blanket she likes and goes to join her sitting in the hammock, wrapping both the blanket and his arm around her to keep the both of them warm.

 

“Do you think it’s clear enough that we’ll be able to see the stars at some point tonight?”

 

“Not tonight, darling.”

 

“Okay, well, then I’m going to break a bit of your tradition then.”

 

He doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but he trusts her completely. So he lets her go on about whatever it is that’s driving her to have them freezing to death on the balcony.

 

“Hi, Liam.” Oh, God. Now he knows what she was talking about, and his throat constricts as she continues to talk. “I know that you can’t really hear me, but that’s never mattered before. I just wanted to let you know that Killian and I are getting married, and I wanted to thank you for every bit of influence you had in his life. You and your mom, really, because the two of you raised the man that I love. So thanks, I guess. I’m not as eloquent as Killian is, and I don’t do this quite as often…but, I, uh…it just felt right to tell you.”

 

If he wasn’t sure of Emma before, and how could he not be, he’s entirely sure of her now. They’ve been through so many ups and downs together, and not just while they’ve been dating. She’s brought him back from the brink of drinking too much and feeling too little, and as she rests her head on his shoulder and wraps her arms around his waist, her fingers tapping against his skin while he presses a kiss to her hairline, like Emma said, everything just feels right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always hate ending a story, but everything can't go on forever. This was a fun (if not a bit angsty so you guys tell me) little way to get out of a writing rut that I was in for Second in Command back in September, and I'm so very thrilled that you guys have liked it so much! :D

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You guys are all amazing :D


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